HARSNETT, Samuel (1561-1631)

An early dissenter from the Calvinist consensus of the later Elizabethan Church, Harsnett flourished as a protégé of the anti-Calvinist Lancelot Andrewes^* (later bishop of Winchester), and then as chaplain to the anti-puritan Richard Bancroft^*, bishop of London, (and later archbishop of Canterbury). However, from 1616 he relied on the patronage of the crypto-Catholic Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, which meant that he lay outside the orbit of the main group of anti-Calvinist court clerics, the ‘Durham House’ group – named after the residence of their leader, Richard Neile^*, bishop of Durham (later archbishop of York) – who gravitated towards the royal favourite, George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham. Harsnett’s career prospects were blighted during the mid 1620s by the hostility between Arundel, the only court hispanophile not disgraced following the breakdown of relations with Spain, and Buckingham, who assumed the leadership of the anti-Spanish faction from the autumn of 1623. It was only after the duke’s assassination in August 1628 that Harsnett was preferred to the archbishopric of York, where he quickly reached an accommodation with King Charles’s favourite cleric, William Laud^*, then bishop of London (later archbishop of Canterbury), who shared many of his own views on the importance of the sacraments and ceremonial in worship.

Early life and theology, 1561-1603

Harsnett – he altered the spelling of his name while at Cambridge – was the younger son of a Colchester baker, William Halsnoth, a Marian Protestant who had been indicted before the Essex magistrates for attending an unlawful assembly in 1556, but fled before he could be investigated for heresy. The family may have struggled after Halsnoth’s death in 1574, as Harsnett arrived at King’s College, Cambridge about two years later as a sizar – a servant to another student. Any financial problems were resolved in 1580, when Harsnett secured a scholarship at Pembroke Hall, where he went on to become a fellow.31 Pearce, 20-1. While the fellows of his college held a wide range of theological views, Harsnett may have been raised as a godly Calvinist, as in April 1586 (by which time he was presumably ordained and holding a curacy) he was questioned by the court of High Commission about his refusal to wear the surplice. His account of his interrogation, surviving in a manuscript compilation of puritan sufferings, shows him being browbeaten and committed by an unnamed bishop, probably John Whitgift^†, archbishop of Canterbury. He was apparently detained for a short while, and immediately after this incident the fellows of Pembroke recommended him for a place as schoolmaster in his native Colchester.32 Oxford DNB, xxv. 553; Benham, 105-9; Brownlow, 38-9; Pearce, 24-5.

Harsnett resigned his headship at Colchester after only 18 months, returning to Pembroke to pursue ‘the study of divinity’. As a clergyman, he would have been unable to avoid subscription to the Three Articles Whitgift had devised as a loyalty test for puritan ministers, so his return to Cambridge suggests that he had abandoned his puritan views. He may have turned his back on nonconformity over the Marprelate tracts, or been enticed back to Pembroke by Lancelot Andrewes, who, shortly thereafter, was elected master on the death of the puritan William Fulke. At any rate, Harsnett had clearly experienced some sort of rift with the godly, as, in a letter of October 1588 to the Colchester corporation nominating a candidate to serve out his year’s notice at the school, he presumed to question the recommendation of a rival candidate, William Bentley, by the well-known puritan cleric John Knewstub. Harsnett claimed that Knewstub was unaware of Bentley’s academic shortcomings, but his objections were swiftly quashed by a testimonial from three Cambridge heads of house, and Bentley was duly appointed.33 Pearce, 25-37.

While the quarrel over the Colchester headship was more about patronage than doctrinal differences – Harsnett also vented his frustration over unpaid expenses he had incurred on the school’s behalf – his theological views almost certainly began to alter at this time. Andrewes, who had privately expressed doubts about the Bezan doctrine of double predestination in the 1580s, became more outspoken after the death of his patron, Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham^‡, in 1590. Harsnett joined in this controversy with a sermon preached at Paul’s Cross on 27 Oct. 1594. He began by summarizing Calvinist soteriology in a provocative manner: ‘there is a conceit in the world … that God should design many thousands of souls to Hell before they were [created], not in eye to their faults, but to his own absolute will and power, and to get him glory in their damnation’. This belief was patently absurd, he insisted: ‘God could not delight in the death of a sinner, who parted with his Delight [Christ] to save a sinner’; nor did Christ die for ‘a few of the elect only; but for the sins of every sinful soul in the world’. He concluded by urging his listeners to ‘beware, that we neither (with the papists) rely upon our freewill; nor (with the Pelagian) upon our nature; nor (with the puritan) curse God and die, laying burden of our sins on His shoulders’.34 S. Harsnett, A Sermon Preached at St. Paul’s Cross in London, the 27 day of October, anno Reginae Elizabethae 26 (1656), 133-4, 142, 155, 165. Brownlow, 42-3 re-dates this sermon from 1584 to 1594. The tone of this sermon was highly controversial, and if preached in Cambridge it would doubtless have elicited complaints such as those which destroyed the career of Peter Baro, a professor of divinity who espoused similar views. Years later, Harsnett recalled that ‘his sermon at Paul’s Cross, of predestination negative’ had earned him a rebuke from Whitgift, and that he had consequently avoided the topic thereafter.35 LJ. iii. 389a; Brownlow, 41-5; H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, 277-429.

It is unclear who, if anyone, encouraged Harsnett to speak out on such a controversial subject. He was almost certainly chosen to preach on the recommendation of Andrewes, a prebend of St Paul’s Cathedral. However, Andrewes was never this outspoken in the pulpit, although he may have been prepared to use Harsnett as a stalking horse. Another possibility is that Harsnett was encouraged to court controversy by Richard Bancroft^* (later archbishop of Canterbury), then a contender for the vacant bishopric of London, who had preached an inflammatory sermon of his own against presbyterianism at Paul’s Cross in 1589. Bancroft espoused mainstream Calvinist views on predestination, but he was prepared to recruit a wide range of opinions to serve his campaign against nonconformity. Whoever it was who encouraged Harsnett, the latter’s sermon certainly begat controversy. The ringing endorsement of double predestination delivered by William Whitaker, master of St John’s College, Cambridge in February 1595 was probably a riposte to Harsnett, and the views of those he echoed, while the London minister John Dove refuted Harsnett’s views in a sermon delivered on the same text at Paul’s Cross in 1597. Whitaker’s sermon inaugurated the campaign against Peter Baro, which saw the latter hounded from the university, during the course of which Harsnett was said to have been one of Baro’s few allies.36 Pearce, 38-53.

In June 1597 Harsnett was inducted to the vicarage of Chigwell, Essex, doubtless on the recommendation of Andrewes, who held the rectory as a prebend of St Paul’s. Bancroft finally secured the bishopric of London at this time, and in the following year Harsnett was collated to a prebend at St Paul’s, and also became one of Bancroft’s chaplains, acting as a censor for the London book trade. This role landed him in trouble in 1599, when he approved a history of the reign of Henry IV, written by his Cambridge contemporary John Hayward. The parallels between the ambitions of Bolingbroke and the dedicatee of Hayward’s volume, Robert Devereux^*, 2nd earl of Essex, caused the latter to complain. Bancroft was forced to suppress the second edition of the work; Hayward was prosecuted in Star Chamber; and Harsnett clearly feared that he might be implicated.37 K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars Restored, 84-5; Brownlow, 46-7, 96, 175-7; B. Usher, Ld. Burghley and Episcopacy, 1577-1603, pp. 14-15; Pearce, 55-61.

One of the most important tasks Harsnett undertook for Bancroft was the investigation of the Nottinghamshire preacher John Darrell, whose public exorcisms highlighted the failure of the established Church to suppress witchcraft, and tended to develop into the sort of ‘prophesyings’ Bancroft had spend years trying to suppress. With Harsnett’s assistance, Darrell was tried and exposed as a fraud; he then went into print to justify his actions, but was refuted by Harsnett, who highlighted the similarity between Darrell’s exorcisms and those performed by Catholic priests. Later, in 1605, the alleged witch Anne Gunter was lodged with Harsnett while under investigation by Star Chamber.38 Brownlow, 48-90; Pearce, 62-76.

Administrative career and parliamentary apprenticeship, 1603-19

In January 1603, shortly before his final attack on Darrell went to press, Harsnett was appointed archdeacon of Essex, perhaps as a reward for his labours against Darrell. His archidiaconal court instituted proceedings against nonconformist ministers, following the re-imposition of subscription to the Three Articles by Bancroft (newly promoted archbishop of Canterbury) in December 1604, but no-one was deprived during his tenure. In 1605, Harsnett succeeded Andrewes as master of Pembroke, and in 1606 he took his turn as vice chancellor of Cambridge University. The subscription campaign against nonconformist ministers remained in force, and in 1608, while acting as commissary for Bancroft’s archiepiscopal visitation of Ely diocese, Harsnett deprived two Cambridge ministers. In November 1609 Andrewes was translated from the bishopric of Chichester to Ely, a much wealthier diocese. The vacancy was initially offered to Neile, then bishop of Rochester, but when he declined, Bancroft successfully persuaded King James to appoint Harsnett instead. Harsnett surrendered all his livings except for the mastership of Pembroke, but was given another Essex rectory, Stisted, to hold in commendam.39 Fasti, i. 9; SP14/49/7; Fincham, 21; Brownlow, 133-4.

One of Harsnett’s first episcopal duties was to attend the parliamentary session which opened in February 1610. His absence was excused twice, but even so, he was present in the House for over three-quarters of its daily sittings, although, as might be expected of a novice, he did not play a large part in its proceedings.40 Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 208; LJ, ii. 599a. Along with most of the House, he was required to attend the conference of 14 Feb. at which the main business of the session, the king’s financial problems, was first raised. On 27 Feb. he was ordered to confer with the Commons over absolutist statements contained in a legal dictionary written by the Cambridge professor Dr John Cowell, although there was nothing he could do to ameliorate his colleague’s unfortunate situation. Otherwise, he was named to a diverse range of bill committees, including an estate bill for Edward Neville^*, 8th or 1st Lord Abergavenny; a bill to punish receivers of stolen goods; and another to regulate the wool trade.41 LJ, ii. 551a, 557b, 583b, 595b, 624b, 631b. When Parliament resumed in the autumn, Harsnett attended the conference at which the Lords tried to ascertain whether MPs were interested in the fiscal reform plan which had been agreed at the end of the previous session. The deal collapsed three weeks later, and during the recriminations which followed, the MP Richard Martin^‡ attacked Harsnett for preaching an absolutist sermon: ‘did not a prelate [Harsnett] preach upon this text, Give unto Caesar etc., that it was not to give but to render, and made subsidies not gifts, but duties? And [in a reference to Cowell] have we not books in print to confirm this?’42 Doubtless a slighting reference to Dr John Cowell. This unfortunate incident may explain why Harsnett secured a licence of absence for the Addled Parliament: only turning up in the Lords for four days during the session, but never registered a proxy.43 LJ, ii. 671a, 686a; SO3/6, unfol.; Procs. 1610 ed. Foster, ii. 328. T. Fuller, Church Hist. of Britain (1655), x. 68, misdates this incident to 1614.

While other duties often kept him away from Sussex, Harsnett was a vigorous administrator at Chichester, where he issued stricter regulations for the cathedral canons, conducted a survey of dilapidated churches, and urged canons to serve their rural cures whenever possible. When riding the circuit for diocesan visitations he held confirmations, and he kept a close eye on his consistory court, eventually installing as chancellor his friend Clement Corbett, master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, who later followed him to Norwich.44 Chichester Chapter Acts ed. W.D. Peckham (Suss. Rec. Soc. lviii), 190-1, 220; Fincham, 125, 127, 138-44, 158-9, 320. In 1614-15 he served a second term as vice chancellor at Cambridge, presiding over a royal visit made memorable by his refusal to award honorary doctorates to courtiers. At Pembroke, however, there was dissatisfaction with his plan to invest the college’s financial surplus in land rather than distribute it among the fellows. Andrewes intervened in 1612, and believed Harsnett had agreed to resign, but the latter clung to office until 1616, when Harsnett’s deputy, John Pocklington, was accused of Catholicism. As a result, both Pocklington and Harsnett were forced to resign.45 Chamberlain Letters, i. 588-9. 591; Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters 1585-1617, no. 221; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 139; Brownlow, 137-40; Pearce, 77-94.

The unfortunate outcome of the quarrels at Pembroke highlighted Harsnett’s need for a court patron to take the place of both Bancroft, who had died in 1610, and Andrewes, who was clearly offended by his stubborn refusal to relinquish the headship of Pembroke. The man who emerged as his new patron was the earl of Arundel, whose Sussex seat lay close to Chichester. Having spent the period between 1612 and 1614 in Italy, Arundel probably met the bishop on his return, and it is possible that Harsnett played a role in convincing the crypto-Catholic earl to conform and take an active role at court. By 1617 Harsnett was seeking Arundel’s assistance over disputes with Chichester corporation, and preferment for Pocklington.46 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters 1585-1617, nos. 220-1, 225. Over time, the relationship evolved into something more than a mutual convenience: in 1620 Arundel sent his son William to serve as a page in Harsnett’s household, and in 1622 Franciscus Junius, tutor to the earl’s children, described the earl and the bishop poring over classical works at Harsnett’s house. Junius was himself a significant contact for Harsnett, being his only demonstrable link to the Dutch Arminians, whose theological outlook was closest to his own.47 Brownlow, 144-5; Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius ed. P.C. Molhuysen (Rijks Geschiedkundige Publikatien lxxxii), ii. 240-1. Arundel first attempted to secure preferment for Harsnett in 1617. The diocese he had in mind was probably Durham, vacated by the death of William James^* in May. However, his influence proved insufficient, and in December, two months after the installation of Richard Neile, Harsnett glumly protested ‘that I never affected the place I am in, nor any bishopric in the kingdom’. Nevertheless, in May 1619, when a vacancy occurred at Norwich, he took it.48 Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters 1585-1617, no. 226; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 240-1. Brownlow, 142-4 wrongly assumes the 1617 vacancy was at Norwich.

Disputes at Norwich and in Parliament, 1619-25

Whereas Chichester had presented problems of clerical apathy, non-residence and dilapidations, Norwich diocese was dominated by an active and well-organized godly community, who did not take kindly to attempts to curb their nonconformist tendencies. Within days of Harsnett’s arrival, episcopal officials were instructing the Norwich churches to place their communion tables altarwise. The new bishop’s visitation articles of 1620 were also the first to attempt a detailed investigation of the conduct of the lectureships, where puritan ministers often found refuge from the ecclesiastical authorities. Not surprisingly, therefore, Harsnett’s efforts at reform began to encounter resistance. Indeed, after he excommunicated one offender for neglecting the Prayer Book rubric for the churching of women (a common offence), the matter was challenged in King’s Bench.49 Vis. Articles ed. K. Fincham (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. i), 216; M.R. Reynolds, ‘Puritanism and the Emergence of Laudianism in City Pols. in Norwich, c.1570-1643’ (Univ. of Kent Ph.D. thesis, 2002), 105-7, 149-50. Harsnett also ran into problems with some of the clergy of his new diocese: when Samuel Ward, town lecturer at Ipswich, published an anti-Catholic caricature in 1622, Harsnett revoked his preaching licence. He also cut the number of weekly lectures in Norwich, to the dismay of the puritan preachers John Yates and John Ward, and their sponsors on the city corporation. In addition, he summoned the brother of the Norwich minister Thomas Scott (author of the controversial tract Vox Populi) before the Norwich consistory court, although he quickly agreed to drop proceedings when pressed by Dudley Carleton^* (later 1st Viscount Dorchester). Finally, in September 1622 Harsnett seized upon the new royal instructions against controversial preaching to order the replacement of Sunday afternoon services with catechizing classes, and in Norwich he stipulated that morning services should end by 9.30, so that the inhabitants could attend a sermon at the cathedral.50 Reynolds, 107-15; CSP Dom, 1619-23, p. 431; SP14/134/20, 75; Oxford DNB xlix. 477-8.

Harsnett missed most of the 1621 Parliament; from May he was involved with local administration in his diocese.51 CSP Dom. 1619-23, pp. 230, 260, 268, 290, 292, 297, 310-11. He attended the Lords for four days at the start of the session, but then left without appointing a proxy, and only reappeared for the autumn sitting, which began on 20 November. The link between the bishop and his noble patron emerged during a debate on the monopolies bill, when Arundel, seeking to defend the royal prerogative of making such grants, was enthusiastically seconded by Harsnett, who warned the House ‘not to abridge’ the king ‘of those prerogatives which his ancestors enjoyed’; the bill was eventually dashed.52 LD 1621, p. 102. Harsnett also took an interest in the accusations made against the new lord keeper, John Williams^*, bishop of Lincoln (later archbishop of York), by a dissatisfied litigant, Sir John Bourchier^‡. His initial concern, on 3 Dec., was to establish whether the Lords had the right of judicial review; he moved to consult the judges on this question, and was supported by Prince Charles (Stuart^*, prince of Wales). By the time Arundel raised the issue again a week later, it had become clear that the charges against Williams were malicious. Harsnett noted ‘the affront of Sir John Bourchier flearing into the lord keeper’s face’, and when Bourchier’s punishment was debated the following morning, Harsnett moved that he be required to make a public apology, and that it be published.53 Ibid. 108, 111-12, 119; HP Commons 1604-29, iii. 264. In the aftermath of the dissolution, Harsnett vigorously promoted the benevolence raised in lieu of parliamentary taxation, collecting £1,425 from the clergy of his diocese, more than the value of a clerical subsidy.54 E401/2435, unfol.

Harsnett had no plans to attend the 1624 Parliament; his intention was to take the waters at Bath. However, political considerations may also have informed his decision: with Buckingham and Prince Charles calling for a war with Spain, Arundel and the pro-Spanish faction at court looked vulnerable. Harsnett may have hoped that his absence would keep him out of trouble; this strategy was certainly considered by other hispanophiles such as Sir Thomas Wentworth^*, 2nd bt. (later earl of Strafford).55 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 38v; Wentworth Pprs. ed. J.P. Cooper (Cam. Soc. 4th ser. xii), 205; C. Russell, PEP, 145. At the start of the session Arundel informed the House of the bishop’s intention to send a proxy, which Harsnett subsequently gave to his friend and fellow anti-Calvinist Valentine Carey^*, bishop of Exeter. Although he appeared in the House on 27 Feb., the day Buckingham’s account of the collapse of the Spanish Match was reported to the Lords, he departed a week later, when George Montaigne^*, bishop of London (later archbishop of York), applied for leave of absence on his behalf.56 LJ, iii. 212a, 214b, 246a; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, f. 26.

Harsnett returned to Westminster on 29 Apr., having learned that some of his enemies at Norwich had complained to the Commons. He asked whether he would be sent to the lower House to answer the charges against him – a procedural mistake he would not have made if he had attended the impeachment proceedings of 1621. The Commons’ investigation had begun at the grievances’ committee on 17 Apr., when several MPs cautiously argued that the allegations made should be referred to George Abbot^*, archbishop of Canterbury. The momentum of the inquiry gathered pace when witnesses were examined on 3 May, and four days later Sir Edward Coke^‡ – a former recorder of Norwich, who may have played a role in instigating the proceedings – presented a lengthy catalogue of complaints to the Commons.57 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 38v; ‘Holland 1624’, ii. ff. 36-7, 71-5; ‘Earle 1624’, ff. 167-9; CJ, i. 784b. After a surprisingly brief debate, the charges, with some additions, were ready for dispatch to the Lords the following day, where they were greeted with the true but somewhat feeble response that poor attendance – many peers were absent, hunting at Eltham with the king – was causing delays. This was almost certainly intended to allow Harsnett time to consider his defence, and when he asked for a fresh conference, a meeting was scheduled for 19 May.58 LJ, iii. 362b, 384b, 387a; SP14/164/46, 86; C.C.G. Tite, Impeachment and Parlty. Judicature, 173.

The six charges proffered by the Commons dealt with Harsnett’s implementation of the 1622 preaching instructions; decoration of the cathedral in an allegedly popish manner; excommunication of those who did not face east during prayers; the frivolous prosecution of the minister Robert Peck for holding a conventicle; the charging of excessive fees; and Harsnett’s failure to register institutions to benefices properly. Harsnett, however, offered a robust defence. He refuted or mitigated each of the specific charges, and spoke at large about ‘why he should be thought a papist’, the allegation levelled by Coke in his ‘aggravation’ of the charges. Recalling his Paul’s Cross sermon of 1594, Harsnett claimed that the views he had expressed about predestination on that occasion had since been vindicated by Robert Abbot^*, late bishop of Salisbury. He also insisted that he scorned the ‘juggling and feigned miracles’ of Catholicism, such as those exposed in his 1602 tract against Darnell. Yet he could not resist baiting his enemies by stating ‘that we fetch not our Reformation from Wyclif, Hus and Luther of latter times, but from the first four hundred years next after Christ’.59 LJ, iii. 388a-90a; Reynolds, 118-21.

Having completed his defence, Harsnett filed a counter-complaint against the man he suspected had instigated the charges, Thomas Stokes. However, it quickly became clear that the Lords were reluctant to take the investigation much further. Prince Charles suggested that the first four points, about matters of religion, be sent to the court of High Commission, while the Lords should retain jurisdiction over the claims about excessive fees and the registration of clerical institutions. Lord Keeper Williams – another of Buckingham’s enemies, who had faced investigated earlier in the session – moved to refer all the charges to High Commission, while Archbishop Abbot offered to return the next day with the official table of ecclesiastical fees in order to establish whether Harsnett was culpable on this point. It was eventually decided to refer all of the charges to High Commission, with orders to report back to the Lords in due course.60 LJ, iii. 389a-b; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 96-7; APC, 1623-5, p. 237; Reynolds, 122-3. This referral was seen by the Commons as the prelude to a whitewash: ‘neither is it to be expected that any great matter will be there [at High Commission] made of it’, sniffed Sir Francis Nethersole^‡; while Sir Robert Phelips^‡ complained that the Lords ‘have indignified us’ [sic]. The king commented upon the case in his speech at the close of the session: if Harsnett, he said, ‘had hindered the preaching of conformable men … or had exacted upon the people in fees … in that case he was to blame, and should be punished for it, if it were so found by the archbishop of Canterbury’. However, James ‘liked not of the complaint made against him for having set up some images in churches, and adorned others, for which His Majesty commended him’, as also for his suppression of ‘popular sermons’.61 SP14/165/34; ‘Spring 1624’, pp. 246-7; Tite, 174-5. James subsequently took an interest in the outcome of this dispute, and at the end of June, Stokes, the last of Harsnett’s critics, was ordered to make a public apology to the bishop.62 The Eagle, xvii. 347-50.

Encouraged by the successful rebuttal of his enemies in Parliament, and armed with the king’s express approval, Harsnett moved against Great Yarmouth, where he suspected the corporation of turning a blind eye to a separatist conventicle recently discovered within the town. He installed his own candidate into one of the town’s two lectureships, forcing the corporation to bring a Chancery suit for possession, which they lost when it was sent to Archbishop Abbot for arbitration. Meanwhile, in Norwich, Harsnett’s churchmanship began to gather support: two of the city’s churches were re-edified, with voluntary contributions from several aldermen; and in 1627 the corporation voted down a proposal to endow two more lectureships.63 R. Cust, ‘Anti-Puritanism and Urban Pols.’, HJ, xxxv. 3-5; Reynolds, 142-63.

Harsnett arrived in Westminster promptly at the start of the 1625 Parliament, perhaps anticipating a petition against him from Great Yarmouth, although none was forthcoming. He was, for the first time, named to the standing committee for privileges, and two bill committees, one to promote the modernization of militia arms, the other to make changes to the petition for enforcement of the recusancy laws. Like many peers, he left plague-ridden London a week before Parliament adjourned on 11 July.64 Procs. 1625, pp. 45, 72, 84. When the session reconvened at Oxford on 1 Aug., his absence was excused by Thomas Morton^*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield; he arrived four days later, when he was named to the committee for the bill for relief of plague victims in London. He was also ordered to attend a conference with the Commons on religion, at which news of fresh pardons for Catholics raised the justifiable fear that King Charles had broken his promise of the previous year to enforce the recusancy laws. The Lords responded by giving a fresh recusancy bill a second reading, whereupon Harsnett was named to the committee, but the Parliament was dissolved before it could meet.65 Ibid. 125, 139, 146, 152, 177.

Buckingham’s impeachment, 1626

In 1626 Arundel and his brother-in-law, William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, came to Parliament with the intention of calling Buckingham to account for his failures as a statesman and administrator. As one of Arundel’s clients, Harsnett attended almost every day’s debates and, unlike in 1624, he was vociferous in his opposition to Buckingham. Politically, this made him an exceptional case: the York House conference of February 1626 established the anti-Calvinists of Bishop Neile’s Durham House group firmly within the favourite’s orbit; whereas Harsnett, for all his ideological sympathies with this group, backed his own patron, Arundel.66 Russell, PEP, 263; 266, 285-6; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 164-80. The first debate in which Harsnett was recorded to have spoken, that of 25 Feb., concerned an important procedural motion: the decision to allow peers to hold no more than two proxies each. This was a blow aimed at the favourite, who held no less than 13 proxies, and his supporters rushed to oppose the motion. Arundel asked whether there were any precedents for this order about proxies, a suggestion which divided the duke’s men, and then moved to search for precedents where orders had been changed arbitrarily. Harsnett completed the confusion of the duke’s supporters by observing that it was ‘a novelty to look into precedents for making an order’, and the motion was carried following a vote.67 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 630; Procs. 1626, i. 71-2; iv. 10-11. The Commons, meanwhile, began investigating Buckingham’s misdeeds, and on 3 Mar. Harsnett was among those appointed to prepare for a conference about the duke’s role in the detention of a French ship, which had caused a diplomatic rift. The king halted this investigation, and vented his displeasure on 5 Mar. by arresting Arundel, ostensibly for marrying his heir to a daughter of the late Esmé Stuart^*, 3rd duke of Lennox [S] (and earl of March in the English peerage), without royal permission. The Lords, shocked at this development, did not debate the arrest until 15 Mar., when Harsnett called for a petition to be sent to the king calling for Arundel’s release. He was promptly seconded by Bishop Morton, then redoubled his bets by calling for a cessation of business until the petition was delivered. The resulting debate ended inconclusively, and Arundel remained in the Tower.68 Procs. 1626, i. 99, 158-9; Russell, PEP, 287, 312-14.

While the Commons pressed their attacks on the duke, the Lords lacked a focus for their complaints. Harsnett attempted to open a fresh line of attack on 1 Apr., seizing upon a report about the depredations of Dunkirk privateers to expose Buckingham’s shortcomings as lord admiral. ‘A convoy to sea to secure the coasts’, he insisted; but the debate did no more than highlight the duke’s feeble reputation for competency.69 Procs. 1626, i. 241-2. The duke’s enemies were galvanized after Easter when John Digby^*, 1st earl of Bristol, demanded that he be issued with a writ of summons to allow him to refute the aspersions Buckingham had made about his role in negotiations for the Spanish Match in 1622-3. Bristol’s wish was granted, but with the qualification that as he was still under house arrest he could not take his seat in the Lords. The upper House debated this point on 29 Apr., when Harsnett recalled that when he himself had stood charged on 19 May 1624 he had sat in his seat, not at the bar. Furthermore, he noted, the only allegations made against Bristol thus far were those contained in a message of 21 Apr. from the king. This did not constitute a formal charge, and until such a document was drafted, he moved for Bristol to take his seat in the House. A long debate ended inconclusively, and when the earl came to the House on 1 May, he was required to kneel at the bar.70 Ibid. 295-6, 321, 328; Russell, PEP, 302-4. Yet Bristol turned the tables by interrupting the king’s charges against him to present his own allegations against Buckingham. The duke naturally insisted that the king’s charges took precedence, but Harsnett observed that Bristol’s allegations had been read first, and claimed that ‘when his Majesty reposed the trial in this House, he also referred it to the orders of the House’. In the end, Buckingham’s supporters won this point, and on the following day they counter-attacked, criticizing Bristol for submitting his charges to the Commons as well as the Lords. Harsnett was one of several speakers who observed that the House could not take cognizance of debates in the Commons unless MPs chose to inform them, and Buckingham eventually conceded the point.71 Procs. 1626, i. 337-8, 346-8. On 8 May Bristol asked how he could expect to receive a fair trial when the only witness to many of the treasonable words he was alleged to have uttered was his accuser, the king. Harsnett moved to consult with the judges about precedents, and was named to the committee appointed to agree the form of words in which this delicate question was asked.72 Ibid. 378-9, 381, 392-3.

On 8 and 10 May the Commons finally presented their charges against Buckingham. Harsnett was one of the eight reporters ordered to take notes; it was his misfortune to handle the summing-up by Sir John Eliot^‡, who implied that Charles had been an accessory to Buckingham’s murder of King James. Eliot and Sir Dudley Digges^‡, who had also dealt with the murder charge, were arrested overnight, and on 11 May Harsnett nervously asked the Lords how full a report he was required to make. He was reassured that ‘nothing spoken or delivered there is to be imputed to the reporter’, but two days later Buckingham speculated that some of those who had already given their reports might have embellished their accounts. When making his own report on 15 May, Harsnett reminded the House that ‘no rational construction can be made of anything that can touch the king’s honour’, presumably hoping this would excuse any perceived shortcomings in his own report. He was subsequently one of the 36 peers who helped to secure the release of the detainees by affirming that nothing Digges had said impugned the king’s reputation.73 Ibid. 402, 441-2, 477, 479, 481-2; Russell, PEP, 304-7. The original of Harsnett’s notes is SP16/27/2.

With all the charges and counter-charges filed, the examination of witnesses began. Harsnett was named to the committee ordered to handle the king’s charges against Bristol, but nothing happened over the next two weeks, as the House staged a strike in order to secure the release of Arundel, which occurred on 8 June. Examination of witnesses was to follow, but Charles had by now resolved on a dissolution. The order arrived on 15 June, when Harsnett was one of many who called for the whole House to petition the king to change his mind. The bishop was included on the committee drafting the message, but Charles declined to receive it, and the Parliament came to an end.74 Procs. 1626, i. 540, 596-7, 635; Russell, PEP, 320-1.

Aside from his role in the Arundel and Bristol cases, Harsnett was involved in some procedural business during the session. On 13 Mar. he reported a private bill to settle the inheritance of a Norfolk estate, advising that the bill be dashed, and the cause assigned to Lord Keeper Sir Thomas Coventry^* (later 1st Lord Coventry) for arbitration.75 Procs. 1626, i. 79, 143-5. On 23 Mar. he moved the House to consider a petition from George Gardiner, a Norwich man detained for selling forged parliamentary protections. The offender was ordered to stand in the pillory at Norwich, despite Harsnett’s repeated efforts to mitigate his punishment. When a case involving a genuine breach of parliamentary privilege came before the House on 24 Apr., Harsnett was one of those who secured the release of the man who had made the arrest, on the grounds that the detainee had not showed his protection at the time.76 Ibid. 201-3, 250, 255, 259, 281-2, 309-10.

Harsnett’s role in the impeachment proceedings did not go unnoticed by the public: one excitable correspondent considered that he and others of the duke’s foes had ‘purchased to themselves an eternal memory’.77 Warws. RO, CR136/B108; Procs. 1626, iv. 344. However, after the dissolution, Arundel was placed under house arrest and lost his share of the currant farm, which forced him to sell some of his estates. In July 1627 Harsnett, having undertaken a survey of the earl’s Norfolk manors, warned his patron that ‘some of these favourites must be sacrificed to save the whole’. At the same time, he deplored the fate of Archbishop Abbot, suspended from office for refusing to license an absolutist sermon for the press. As for his own standing at court, he admitted ‘I know I am deep in their black book’.78 M.F.S. Hervey, Life of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 258-9, 471; Arundel Castle, Autograph Letters 1617-32, no. 291; THOMAS HOWARD, 21ST (OR 14TH) EARL OF ARUNDEL.

The Petition of Right, 1628

Buckingham’s military misadventures at the Île de Ré in 1627 nearly bankrupted the Caroline regime, and required the summons of a fresh Parliament in March 1628. The duke and his erstwhile critics were reluctant to attack each other in Parliament again, and in any case, the constitutional debates which dominated the session did not divide the Lords along factional lines.79 Russell, PEP, 326-7, 342. At the start of the session, the Commons claimed that the ‘liberties of the subject’ had been breached by the arbitrary fiscal and legal measures of the previous two years, presenting their findings to the Lords at a conference on 7 Apr., at which Harsnett served as an assistant reporter. The king – whose fleet was stuck in harbour for want of money – pressed the Lords for a speedy resolution of this constitutional crisis, whereupon Harsnett responded that one of the reporters, Bishop Williams, was ready to speak that afternoon, while Arundel, the second reporter, confirmed that he, too, was prepared; but William Cavendish^*, 2nd earl of Devonshire was not, and the reports were postponed until the following morning.80 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 157, 167. The crown’s case was defended in the Lords by Attorney General Sir Robert Heath^‡, and in the lengthy debate which followed on 12 Apr., Harsnett summed up the conclusions: that the judges should be questioned about their ruling on imprisonment without cause shown in the Five Knights’ case of November 1627; and that Commons should be allowed the right to reply to Heath’s case at a conference. The judges surprised everyone by explaining that their ruling had not been a binding precedent for arbitrary imprisonment, but an interim order returning the accused to prison until the case could be more closely examined. ‘It is impossible to make a just meridian between the king’s prerogative and the people’s liberties’, wailed Harsnett on 15 April.81 Ibid. 204-5, 210, 233, 235; M. Kishlansky, ‘Tyranny Denied’, HJ, xlii. 76-9. After another week of debates, some Lords began to wonder whether the royal prerogative itself needed protection from Magna Carta; Harsnett acknowledged these fears, but insisted that lex terrae [the law of the land] still took precedence. Buckingham called for a snap vote to reject the Commons’ case against arbitrary imprisonment, but several voices were raised against this motion, including Harsnett’s: ‘not to destroy this work by a vote’. At the end of a long debate, Harsnett called for another conference with the Commons. He was among those appointed to draft an agenda, and at the conference on 25 Apr. he read out the five propositions with which the Lords hoped to resolve the constitutional crisis.82 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 321, 324-7, 330, 333; CD 1628, iii. 80-1. J.S. Flemion, ‘A Savings to Satisfy All’, PH, ix. 33-5; Harsnett’s notes on the five propositions, with later annotations by Abp. Laud, are in SP16/102/14.

After extensive debate, the Commons rejected the five propositions, and resolved to proceed instead by a Petition of Right, which arrived in the Lords on 9 May. After two days’ worth of debate about the wording of the Petition, Harsnett observed that ‘the point now left to debate is the substance of all’, which was deferred to Monday 12 May. The king pre-empted this debate with a letter undertaking that he would not, in future, imprison those who refused to loan money to the crown, the issue which had provoked the Five Knights’ case. The Commons promptly rejected this as ‘no parliamentary way’, but Harsnett, speaking on 14 May, was one of many peers who were dismayed by this peremptory dismissal of the prerogative: ‘if that be, we are in a labyrinth, and where we were before’. He therefore welcomed Arundel’s suggestion that the Lords should redraft the Petition of Right to accommodate the promise made in the king’s letter.83 Lords’ Procs. 1628, pp. 399-400, 406, 429-30, 433, 435; CD 1628, iii. 372-3. Over the following week, the Lords searched for a ‘saving clause’ to justify the prerogative in a manner the Commons could accept. Harsnett initially supported this approach, but on 20 May he expressed growing doubts: ‘it is a strange thing to me, that we of both Houses desiring the preservation of the king’s prerogative, that we cannot express it [in] words’. On the following day, when the Commons asked for another conference to settle the issue, he asked whether it might be possible to redraft the saving clause as a preamble to the Petition, ‘in such terms as it may seem only to be declaratory’. This was rejected at the time, but on 26 May, after the Lords backed down from a confrontation with the Commons, they adopted this course of action by entering the saving clause in their own Journal.84 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 456, 461-2, 467, 486, 532; Russell, PEP, 372-4; Flemion, 39-42. The Petition now required the Royal Assent, but Charles’s answer, on 2 June, was a bare acceptance which left the Lords dissatisfied and the Commons outraged. On 7 June, Harsnett, fearing ‘that we shall not rise at the end of this Parliament with that comfort and joy as I thought we should have done’, moved to join the Commons in asking the king for a fuller answer, which he, Arundel, Bristol and Williams were ordered to draft. This did the trick: Charles’s second answer proved acceptable to all, and the session arrived at a broadly harmonious conclusion.85 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 596, 598, 600-1; Russell, PEP, 378-84.

While the focus of debate in 1628 was the Petition of Right, Harsnett was involved in some other business in the Lords. On 31 Mar. he warned the House against wasting too much time upon a petition from a known troublemaker, who had also approached the Commons. On 3 May, at the second reading of the bill for drainage of the great fens, which lay on the western edge of his diocese, he advised that men with local knowledge be appointed to advise the projectors about the impact of the new rivers they proposed to cut, and was named to the bill committee. Three days later, he supported a report by Arundel from the privileges’ committee, which upheld the right of lay peers to give evidence on their honour, rather than by swearing an oath. When the cleric Roger Manwaring^* (later bishop of St Davids) was censured for his absolutist sermons in favour of the Forced Loan, Harsnett recommended that his books be burned, that he preach sermons at court and Paul’s Cross refuting his earlier views, and that he be suspended from the ministry for two years; the actual sentence was far more severe. Finally, when the earl of Devonshire fell sick, Harsnett stepped in to report a petition about the debts of the Muscovy Company.86 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 130, 372, 383-4, 387, 636, 664, 674.

Promotion to York and final years, 1629-31

The prorogation of Parliament was followed by a ministerial reshuffle, one aspect of which was a concerted attempt to rebuild relations with Arundel and other hispanophiles at court. Thus Harsnett’s elevation to the archbishopric of York, vacated by the death of George Montaigne, was almost certainly procured by Arundel; it was an important indicator that Buckingham’s erstwhile friends and enemies were prepared to work together in the aftermath of the duke’s assassination. Orders for Harsnett’s election were dispatched on 3 Nov., and he was installed on 13 Jan. 1629, just in time for the new parliamentary session.87 Wentworth Pprs. 308-9; Kent. Hist and Lib. Cent., U269/1/CB105; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 368; Fasti, iv. 2-3. In the Lords, his newly-acquired metropolitical status led him to assume a prominent role in the procedural business of the House, particularly as a committee chairman and reporter. Early in the session, he presented the king with a petition from both Houses asking for a national fast day, and reported Charles’s rather grudging consent; he also delivered to Charles a plea to relieve the poverty of Robert de Vere^*, 19th earl of Oxford.88 LJ, iv. 14a, 15a-b, 34a-b, 39a. He was similarly active in the standing committee for privileges, reporting on the use of proxies and the exemption of peers’ servants from arrest.89 Ibid. 6a-b, 10b, 27a. He also reported on matters arising before the committee for petitions, and from various legislative committees, including a bill to increase trade, and another to preserve the Crown’s revenues.90 Ibid. 15b, 16a, 17b-18a, 23b-4a, 32b-3a. As a cleric, he had no personal interest in the dispute between the English barons and the gentry who obtained precedence over them by purchasing Irish and Scottish peerages, which probably explains why he was selected to chair the committee which drafted a petition to the king about this contentious issue.91 Ibid. 28b.

Harsnett played an active role in the north during his final years. He professed to be shocked at the level of nonconformity in the northern province – ‘the men of Dan and Bethel, whose hearts are overseas’ – and the loathing was mutual: some of his godly enemies held prayer meetings to seek divine assistance against his ‘designs of mischief’. He was said to have banned sales of the works of the puritan divine William Perkins in his province, and issued a set of instructions which ordered greater respect to be shown during divine service, and towards communion tables in particular.92 CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 73, 141; Fincham and Tyacke, 133-4; Fincham, 283; T. Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart Eng. 88; Tyacke, 182-3. He spent the winter of 1629-30 in London, where he was sworn a privy councillor, assisted Bishop Laud in drafting a new set of royal instructions for church government, and helped to search the papers of Sir Robert Cotton^‡ for a tract advising Charles how to rule without Parliament. He also helped to resolve a dispute at Pembroke Hall.93 CSP Dom, 1629-31, pp. 89, 97, 119, 180, 189; APC, 1629-30, p. 174; P.S. Seaver, Puritan Lectureships, 242-3; L.J. Reeve, Chas. I and the Road to Personal Rule, 158-64. After he returned to the north, Harsnett complained in his letters about the cold and his ill-health, and in April 1631 he went to Bath to recuperate, without success: he died on 25 May.94 CSP Dom, 1629-31, pp. 73, 493; 1631-3, p. 21.

Controversial to the last, Harsnett’s will commanded that he be buried at Chigwell, next to his long-deceased wife,

having only a marble stone laid upon the grave, with a plate of brass molten into the stone an inch thick, having the effigies of a bishop stamped upon it with his mitre and crozier staff, the brass to be so riveted and fastened clear through the stone as sacrilegious hands hands may not rend off the one without breaking the other.

The regalia he specified were those of a pre-Reformation bishop, a bold contrast to the contemporary fashion for portraying bishops as preachers. He also ordered that there be no sermon at his funeral, nor ‘that which is unaptly termed an exercise’. He left £50 to Southwell Minster, Nottinghamshire, to furnish the communion table there, and gave his library to the Colchester corporation, with instructions that it be made available to the local clergy; he had also endowed a grammar school at Chigwell prior to his death. With his only daughter having died in infancy, he divided his modest landholdings in Essex and Sussex between various cousins. He was buried at Chigwell on 8 June 1631, where his gravestone, constructed according to his specifications, survives to this day.95 PROB 11/160, ff. 74-5v, printed in Essex Review, xxi. 24-6; HMC Cowper, i. 432; Fincham, 248-9; Brownlow, 157-8.