HOWSON, John (1557-1632)

One of Oxford’s leading anti-Calvinist controversialists during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, Howson helped to counter his unfavourable reputation among the Calvinist divines who dominated his university by attracting the patronage of two successive archbishops of Canterbury, John Whitgift^† and Richard Bancroft^*. However, with few contacts at court, he had a long wait for promotion after becoming a prebend at Christ Church. He would probably not have secured the see of Oxford were it not for the fact that his most inveterate critic, George Abbot^*, archbishop of Canterbury, tried to humiliate him before the king in 1615, a meeting from which James emerged convinced that it was Abbot who had lost all sense of perspective. Although ideologically close to Richard Neile^* (ultimately archbishop of York) and William Laud^* (later archbishop of Cantebury), Howson did not forge a political alliance with these natural allies until 1628. This earned him a promotion to Durham, but he obviously disapproved of the provocative innovations of Neile’s followers among the cathedral chapter, which left him ill at ease during his final years.

University career and theological controversy to 1605

A Londoner of unknown parentage, born in the parish of St Bride’s, Fleet Street,26 Fuller, Worthies of Eng. 367. Howson was educated at St Paul’s school and, from 1577, Christ Church College, Oxford, an institution with which he remained connected for the next 50 years. He should not be confused with John Howson, BA of King’s College, Cambridge, who was instituted as rector of Halton Holgate, Lincolnshire in 1585.27 Al. Cant.; Christ Church Archives, i.b.1 (Chapter Bk. 1547-1619), ff. 57v, 74, 96, 100v. Much of the information about Howson’s academic career derives from the confrontation between him and his academic contemporary, George Abbot, which occurred in 1615. During the course of this dispute, for instance, Howson revealed that he had been a contender for a fellowship at Balliol in 1583, as he was forced to deny that there had been ‘any competition between him [Abbot] and me for Balliol College’.28 Al. Ox.; ‘John Howson’s Answers to Abp. Abbot’s Accusations’ ed. N. Cranfield and K. Fincham, Cam. Misc. XXIX (Cam. Soc. 4th ser. xxxiv), 341; GEORGE ABBOT. In 1587 Howson was involved in a dispute with an unnamed bishop, which was taken before the Privy Council. This episode apparently did his career no harm, as soon thereafter he acquired cathedral prebends at Hereford and Exeter.29 APC, 1587-8, p. 314; CCEd; Fasti, xii. 55; Le Neve, Fasti (1854), i. 534.

Howson differed from most Oxford divines in his sceptical attitude to Calvinist doctrine on predestination. However, unlike several of his contemporaries, there is little evidence that he was persuaded by the criticisms of the Dutch theologian Arminius. His views first became public around 1595 when, in a sermon delivered at Oxford’s annual degree Act, he attacked a footnote in the Geneva Bible for describing prelates as ‘the locust of the bottomless pit’. This was a provocative step at a time when Archbishop Whitgift was punishing Cambridge divines for questioning the Calvinist consensus of the late Elizabethan Church. However, Howson’s defence of episcopacy was calculated to appeal to Whitgift, and it was only 20 years later that he was called to account for his slur against Genevan scholarship, by Abbot. On this occasion Howson also admitted to having provoked the godly Chief Baron, Sir William Peryam^‡, at an assize sermon during the vice chancellorship of Edmund Lilly of Balliol (probably 1596-7). Knowing Peryam to be ‘judaically affected in the observations of the sabbaths’, Howson insisted it was lawful for people to amuse themselves with sports such as bowls after attending divine service.30 ‘John Howson’s Answers’, 332, 334; M.H. Curtis, Oxf. and Camb. in Transition, 1558-1642, pp. 212-22; K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars Restored, 69.

Howson preached his first sermon at Paul’s Cross in London in December 1597, on Matthew 16:12-13, Christ’s expulsion of the moneychangers from the temple. Speaking in the middle of a parliamentary session, he condemned simony – the purchase of ecclesiastical office – which, he insisted, ‘all good princes and statesmen and parliaments’ deplored. He painted a vivid portrait of the consequences of such abuses for the ministry:

we must pay to the patron for the lease of a life (a spent and outworn life) either in annual pension, or above the rate of a copyhold, and that with the hazard of the loss of our souls, by simony and perjury, and the forfeiture of all our spiritual preferments … what father after a while will be so improvident, to bring up his son to his great charge, to this necessary beggary?

The sermon was an obvious plea for replacement of the 1589 Simony Act. However, no fresh legislation is known to have been tabled during the session.31 J. Howson, A Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse (1598), 25, 31, 48; D. Dean, Law-Making and Soc. in late Eliz. Eng. 115-16.

Six months later, Howson preached upon the same text at the same venue, in a much more provocative way. Arguing that the wealth of the pre-Reformation Church was not sinful in itself, ‘had the superabundance been employed to good holy uses’, he advocated the refurbishment of churches. He then set about to provoke the godly: ‘let no man think that hears me this day, that this zeal for the house of God is any spice of superstition, but a very religious affection, inherent to nature, and true Christianity, though now for the most part blotted out by irreligion and avarice’. He attacked those who believed ‘the only exercise of the service of God [is] to hear a sermon’, while insisting that he did not oppose preaching: ‘I complain not that our churches are auditories, but that they are not oratories: not that you come to sermons, but that you refuse or neglect common prayer; not that you resort … to Paul’s Cross, but that your parish churches are naked and empty’. He ended with a calculated snub to the godly merchants present: ‘there is now also, for the most part, no great difference between a den of thieves and a house of merchandise’.32 J. Howson, A Second Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse (1598), 28, 31, 40-1, 43-4, 49.

If Howson’s sermon was preached with anything like the critical tone of the published version, he must have caused a furore at Paul’s Cross. However, his words probably recommended him to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. His views on church ornamentation and communal prayer were certainly similar to, and possibly inspired by, those recently published by Richard Hooker.33 Fincham and Tyacke, 86-9; K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 232-6. It also seems likely that he was encouraged by Richard Bancroft, newly appointed bishop of London, whose censors quickly authorized this sermon, and the one delivered six months earlier, for publication. At any rate, Howson’s career prospered over the next five years. In July 1598 he was granted the reversion of a prebend at Christ Church, and instituted as vicar of Bampton, Oxfordshire by Archbishop Whitgift on the nomination of the Exeter Cathedral chapter. By 1601 he had become a chaplain to the queen. Through crown patronage he also acquired another living, at Great Milton, Oxfordshire, in 1601. On this occasion he was nominated by John King^* (later bishop of London), his contemporary at Christ Church and now chaplain to the lord keeper, Thomas Egerton^* (later 1st Viscount Brackley).34 CSP Dom. 1598-1601, p. 70; CCEd; McCullough, (suppl. cal. 84); Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 126; Bodl., Tanner 179, unfol. That same year Howson proceeded DD. His theses refuted the Catholic assertion that marriage was a sacrament, validated the possibility of divorce for adultery, but denied that the spouses of adulterers could legitimately remarry; the last of these theses was published in 1603.35 Chamberlain Letters, i. 153; Reg. Univ. Oxf. ii. pt. 1, ed. A. Clark (Oxf. Hist. Soc. x), 203; J. Howson, Uxore dismissa propter fornicationem … (1603).

Oxford gossip may have been correct in suggesting that Howson acquired his doctorate in order to secure the position of university vice chancellor, to which he was nominated in July 1602 by the chancellor, Thomas Sackville^*, Lord Buckhurst (later 1st earl of Dorset), an ally of Whitgift’s.36 C.M. Dent, Protestant Reformers in Eliz. Oxf. 208-9. Buckhurst’s intention seems to have been to crack down on potential nonconformists at Oxford in advance of the queen’s death, a task Howson approached with gusto. Preaching at St Mary’s, Oxford on accession day in November 1602, he stated his intention as being to defend ‘the festivities of our Church’ against ‘priests and Jesuits’. However, he then turned on the puritans, attacking those who ‘gad up and down to hear the word preached’ and insisting that ‘the worship of God consisteth especially in praying and thanksgiving, and is a virtue moral, and not intellectual’. He scoffed at Catholics, ‘who observe the memory of so many fabulous and ridiculous saints’, but mocked a puritan preacher who claimed that, because observation of the Sabbath formed part of the ‘first table’ of the Ten Commandments, Sabbath-breaking was worse than murder or adultery, which was part of the ‘second table’.37 J. Howson, A Sermon Preached at St Maries in Oxford (1602), dedication; sigs. A3r-v, C1. Howson also warned that a monarch should not be idolized. However, he insisted that ‘God honoureth princes with his own name, so that they are called gods, and God’s anointed, and the sons of the most high; he calleth them by his own name, and furnisheth them with divine and supernatural qualities’. This rhetoric about the quasi-divine status of princes was clearly derived from James VI’s works, Basilicon Doron and The Trew Law of Free Monarchies. It emphasized Howson’s agreement with the Jacobean and Whitgiftian vision of the Church as a via media between Catholic and puritan extremes.38 Ibid. sigs. A4v, D1v; King James VI and I: Political Writings ed. J.P. Sommerville, 12, 27, 64.

Howson dedicated this sermon to Buckhurst, but its rehearsal of the ecclesiastical agenda of Whitgift and Bancroft ‘bred much brabbling’, beginning with a sermon preached by John Sprint of Christ Church only four days after Howson had thrown down the gauntlet. Sprint was detained, but other sermons which followed were more personal, accusing Howson of neglecting his country parish for university business. The heads of house were prepared to back their vice chancellor in disciplining junior members, but Howson subsequently overreached himself by revoking the preaching licence of his most senior critic, Henry Airay, provost of Queens’, a decision overturned by the university’s convocation. It took proceedings in Star Chamber, High Commission and the Privy Council to bring the nonconformists to submit to Howson’s authority in March 1603.39 Chamberlain Letters, i. 185; Dent, 210-7; Hist. Univ. Oxf. ed. N. Tyacke, iv. 183-4, 571-2; Bodl, OUA, WPβ/21/4, f. 79. The dust from this crisis had hardly settled before the accession of King James encouraged puritan ministers to mount a petitioning campaign for ecclesiastical reform. Howson began drafting a riposte to the most important of these, the Millenary petition, but his term of office ended before it could be presented, and it was completed in a different vein by the new vice chancellor, George Abbot.40 Bodl., OUA, WPβ/21/4, f. 80v; Sloane 271, f. 23; The Answer of the Vicechancelour … (1603); Dent, 228-9; Hist. Univ. Oxf. iv. 572-4.

University controversies 1605-15

The bruising experience of university office persuaded Howson to keep a lower profile over the next few years. Abbot attempted to discredit him with the new king, while his own dean, Thomas Ravis^*, performed the same role with Buckhurst. When Ravis was promoted to the bishopric of Gloucester, Howson joined other prebends in petitioning for John King, with whom he enjoyed a more equitable relationship, to be appointed as Ravis’s replacement at Christ Church. The new dean secured a royal visit to the college in August 1605, when Howson was ordered to stage a pastoral play in which the appearance of six scantily-clad shepherds caused some scandal, a charge Abbot gleefully recalled a decade later.41 ‘John Howson’s Answers’, 330, 335; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 309; J. Curthoys, Cardinal’s Coll. 83. With his enemies in charge of the university, Howson may have spent more time in his country benefices: in 1608 he exchanged Great Milton for the nearby parish of Brightwell Baldwin, where he built his wife a pew.42 Chamberlain Letters, i. 257; CCEd; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 325. Two years later he was appointed a fellow of Chelsea College, which was intended to serve as a centre of anti-Catholic polemic in London, but failed to prosper.43 Fuller, Church Hist. of Britain, x. 52.

Howson may have assumed that the promotion of Abbot and King to bishoprics in 1609 and 1611 would clear the air at Oxford. In fact, the appointment of the archbishop’s brother Robert Abbot^*, master of Balliol College (and later bishop of Salisbury) to the regius chair of divinity, and Thomas Singleton as vice chancellor, meant that little altered. The Calvinists’ first target was William Laud, whose candidacy for the presidency of St John’s College they attempted to block. Howson responded in 1612 by preaching another controversial sermon at St Mary’s on the issue of marginalia in the Geneva Bible. After defending the lack of marginalia in the new ‘King James’ Bible, he complained that the Geneva marginalia contained 32 instances of Arian heresy. Both Robert Abbot and his own dean, William Goodwin, subsequently attacked him from the pulpit, and he was summoned before Robert Abbot and Henry Airay, who suspended his preaching licence because of his heterodox opinions.44 Ibid. 59; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xii), 191-2; ‘John Howson’s Answers’, 328-9. Archbishop Abbot was undoubtedly the instigator of this campaign, but he waited until June 1615, when his stock was riding high at court, before summoning Howson and Laud to separate interviews before King James. Howson kept a record of his interrogation, which provides a detailed catalogue of two decades’ worth of academic infighting. He easily rebutted allegations that he had associated with known Catholics45 Abbot was clearly unaware of Howson’s association with the former Christ Church fellow Humfrey Leech. Hist. Univ. Oxf. iv. 576-7. and quarrelled with the Christ Church chapter. Charged with criticizing the anti-Catholic work of Thomas Morton^* (later bishop of Durham), he observed that the latter had actually solicited his advice. The only academic with whom he admitted to having disagreed was John Rainolds, who had claimed it was inappropriate to discuss the original language of biblical texts in an English sermon.46 ‘John Howson’s Answers’, 330-1, 335-8.

Paradoxically, Abbot’s attack furthered Howson’s stagnant career, as it is unlikely he would otherwise have come to the king’s attention. Having been cleared of any serious misconduct, Howson proved his conformity in 1616 by delivering a fresh series of sermons at Oxford, which attacked both the papal supremacy and presbyterianism.47 J. Howson, Certaine Sermons made in Oxford (1622). His decision to avoid controversy was opportune, not least because James was then preoccupied by the political problems Arminianism was causing in the United Provinces. In the autumn of 1617 he received his reward, being offered a reversion of the diocese of Oxford, then held by an elderly Calvinist, John Bridges^*. Abbot was evidently dismayed at this decision, as the king’s previous choice as Bridges’ successor had been the Calvinist dean of Gloucester, Richard Field, who died in November 1616. Following Howson’s formal election at Christ Church in September 1618, the archbishop took eight months to consecrate the new bishop of Oxford,48 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 118; N. Field, Short Memorials Concerning the life of … Doctor Richard Field (1717), 15-16; Fasti, viii. 76. who was licensed to retain both his parish livings and his cathedral prebend in commendam, his episcopal income of £320 a year being rather modest. In the event, Howson chose to surrender his prebend.49 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15) vi. 56; C58/23.

Oxford diocese and Parliament, 1618-28

In selecting Howson for Oxford, the king was probably guided by the assumption that a university where Calvinist theology remained dominant required the oversight of a more sceptical bishop. This led to some awkward encounters, like that at the consecration of Exeter College chapel in 1624, when the Calvinist John Prideaux^† (later bishop of Worcester), the head of house and regius professor of divinity, preached a sermon which emphasized the primacy of preaching in worship, thus taking issue with Howson’s sermons of 1598 and 1601. However, Howson did not shirk from imposing his own views on his diocese. During his 1619 visitation, his chaplain preached a sermon in support of confirmation, long neglected under Bridges, while his visitation articles, derived from those of Bancroft as bishop of London (1598-1604) and Richard Neile as bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (1610), began by asking whether the incumbent used the Prayer Book liturgy ‘without any kind of alteration, or omission, and at due and convenient hours? And whether doth your minister omit any part of the service, and make long sermons or prayers of his own?’50 Fincham, 117, 130-1, 234, 238; Fincham and Tyacke, 124-5; Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church ed. K. Fincham (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. i), 188.

Howson was generally assiduous in attending Parliament, but seems to have played little part in its deliberations, although the records do not always distinguish his speeches from those of Henry de Vere^*, 18th earl of Oxford, an active figure in the Lords in 1621 and 1624. In the opening weeks of the 1621 Parliament, the bishop was included on three bill committees. The first, to improve the navigation of the Thames just below Oxford, related to local interests, while the second, on the Sabbath, concerned his personal interests. The third committee, on a bill to restrict the use of writs of certiorari to revoke lawsuits to the Westminster courts, affected his diocesan courts.51 LJ, iii. 22b, 39b. On 2 May 1621, either the bishop or the earl spoke during the proceedings against the former attorney general, Sir Henry Yelverton^‡, arguing that punishment had not formally been referred to the king, as Prince Charles (Stuart^*, prince of Wales) and others supposed, and that the Lords should proceed with their investigation. Two weeks later, the same man argued that Yelverton had still not cleared himself of the charge of slandering the royal favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham.52 LD 1621, pp. 55, 58, 89. However, on 17 May it was certainly the bishop who successfully moved to expedite the hearing of a bribery charge against Theophilus Field^*, bishop of Llandaff.53 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/1, f. 121. Howson was also included on the committees for two estate bills, and ordered to attend a conference with the Commons about the Sabbath and certiorari bills.54 LJ, iii. 110b, 128b, 130b.

In November 1621, shortly before Parliament reconvened, Howson and four other prelates consecrated four new bishops, including the new lord keeper, John Williams^* (as bishop of Lincoln), and William Laud (as bishop of St Davids). Archbishop Abbot, who had accidentally killed a gamekeeper over the summer, was excluded from this ceremony, because Williams had expressed misgivings about whether it was appropriate for a man with blood on his hands to officiate at his consecration.55 J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), i. 68; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 207; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 137. Howson left little trace on the autumn sitting of Parliament: he was added to the standing committee for petitions; and included on a committee to prepare a fresh draft of the Thames navigation bill. It was probably the earl of Oxford, in his role as lord great chamberlain, who called for scaffolding to be erected for conferences in the Painted Chamber.56 LJ, iii. 165b, 171a, 174a; LD 1621, p. 95.

The dissolution deprived the king of a subsidy offered by the Commons. In its stead, the Privy Council collected a benevolence from both laity and clergy, for which Oxford diocese raised £200, almost three-quarters of the yield of a clerical subsidy, slightly less than the national average.57 SP14/133/3. James now adopted a pro-Spanish policy, to the dismay of many godly ministers, and in August 1622 royal instructions to preachers banned all further discussion of theological controversies in sermons. Howson was clearly delighted by this initiative, which, he claimed, would ensure ‘the reformation of such great abuses lately crept into the exercise of so profitable a part of the service of God’. He instructed churchwardens to send quarterly reports of the implementation of the king’s orders, and encouraged parishioners to report breaches directly to him, ‘that so such offenders being punished and reformed, a more religious and peaceable form of preaching and catechizing be settled amongst you’. It was at this time that Howson published his own 1616 sermons, presumably as an illustration of the style of preaching expected under the royal directions.58 Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, 215; Howson, Certaine Sermons.

The 1624 Parliament persuaded a reluctant James to abandon the Spanish Match, and also saw the first signs of a Calvinist counter-attack, in the form of a Commons’ investigation of Richard Montagu^* (later bishop of Chichester) for publishing Arminian theological opinions. While Howson remained silent about both these controversies – it was apparently the earl of Oxford who called for the disarming of papists on 1 Mar. – both men were included on the committee then appointed to examine the supply of munitions in anticipation of a war with Spain.59 Add. 40087, f. 40v cites ‘Oxford’, but PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, f. 21v mentions ‘Lord Oxford’. On 20 Mar., when the deprived minister Caleb Morley was brought to the bar charged with circulating a printed libel against Lord Keeper Williams, Howson acknowledged that he had received a copy of the libel, and that Morley had told him it was being considered by the Commons.60 LD 1624 and 1626, p. 35; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 234. Howson was also included on a handful of bill committees, one to protect hospitals and schools from concealment proceedings, one to improve navigation on the Thames (which measure had come before him in 1621), and a third to annul a patent for the packing of fish. His final appointment was to consider a private estate bill.61 LJ, iii. 235a, 253a, 313a, 363a.

Howson attended the opening of the 1625 Parliament, but then departed Westminster, presumably to avoid the plague, the spread of which persuaded him to abandon his scheduled diocesan visitation that autumn. However, he naturally attended when Parliament briefly reconvened at his own city of Oxford in August, being included on a single committee, for a bill to punish counterfeiters of judicial seals.62 CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 133; Procs. 1625, p. 180.

The 1626 Parliament was dominated by the impeachment of Buckingham, now a duke. The Commons’ attacks on Montagu persuaded an increasing number of anti-Calvinist clerics, particularly Bishop Neile’s ‘Durham House’ clique, to make common cause with the favourite. However Howson, despite having privately vouched for Montagu’s scholarship to the duke in the summer of 1625,63 Works of Abp. Laud, vi. 246. kept a low profile when both the cleric and the favourite came under parliamentary attack in the following year. At the start of the session, Howson was named to the petitions committee,64 Procs. 1626, i. 48. He was mistakenly added to the same committee five days later: ibid. 62. and included on four bill committees. These concerned the New River Company, the confirmation of the landed possessions of hospitals and schools, the enfranchisement of the crown’s copyholders in Denbighshire and jointure arrangements for the under-age Dutton Gerard^†, 3rd Lord Gerard.65 Ibid. 54, 104, 327, 545. On 25 Feb. the Commons granted Sir Henry Marten^‡ parliamentary privilege to stay a Chancery hearing in a suit against Howson, over the cancellation of a lease of a rectory formerly assigned to the diocese of Oxford by Thomas Erskine, earl of Kellie [S].66 Procs. 1626, ii. 125-6; CSP Dom, 1629-31, p. 6; C2/Chas.I/O2/10, 2/Chas.I/O9/10.

The angry dissolution in June 1626 led King Charles to raise money without resort to Parliament. Neile’s clique were happy to assist with sermons in favour of the Forced Loan, but Archbishop Abbot’s refusal to license for publication Robert Sibthorpe’s absolutist sermon persuaded the king to refer the matter to Neile, Howson, Laud and two other anti-Calvinists, George Montaigne^*, bishop of London and John Buckeridge^*, bishop of Rochester, who found in Sibthorpe’s favour. Abbot nevertheless remained obdurate, and on 9 Oct. 1627 he was suspended and his archiepiscopal functions assigned to the five clerics who had endorsed Sibthorpe’s sermon.67 CSP Dom. 1627-8, pp. 157-8; Rushworth, i. 431-3.

Neile, Laud and Buckeridge all played significant roles in the 1628 parliamentary session, but Howson, although he shared the proxy of Francis Godwin^*, bishop of Hereford, and attended two-thirds of the sittings, hardly featured in its debates. At the start of the session he was, once again, included on the petitions committee, and on the committee for the revived hospitals and schools bill, but his only subsequent mention in the records was to attend a conference with the Commons about how the Petition of Right should be recorded on the statute roll.68 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 25, 79, 120, 679.

Bishop of Durham 1628-32

Although Archbishop Abbot was reinstated in July 1628, shortly after the prorogation, it was his enemies who triumphed, and they shared the spoils among themselves in a generous round of ecclesiastical promotions. Howson’s prize was the bishopric of Durham, whose annual revenues were more than five times those of Oxford. Upon his elevation, Howson naturally surrendered his Oxfordshire livings, but he never lost touch with his roots, as he asked in his will, drafted on 11 Sept. 1629, to be buried at Brightwell Baldwin if he died in the south of England.69 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15), vi. 56; CCEd; SP16/174/64; PROB 11/161, f. 188.

Howson attended almost every day of the brief 1629 parliamentary session, although where he lived is unclear, as he leased Durham House, in the Strand, to the lord keeper, the 1st Lord Coventry (Thomas Coventry^*). Despite the fact that anti-Calvinist churchmen were now under concerted attack in the Commons, neither he nor his fellow peers had much business to transact. Howson was included on the petitions committee, on the committee for the hospitals and schools bill, and on a committee for drafting a petition to the king to grant those holding English peerages precedence over Englishmen who held Scottish or Irish titles.70 LJ, iv. 6b, 10b, 27b.

Howson later claimed that he was detained in London by litigation until the spring of 1630, during which time Sir Henry Marten embarrassed him by revealing that he had pocketed the fees for the abortive diocesan visitation of 1625.71 CSP Dom. 1629-9, pp. 547-8; 1629-31, pp. 6, 133. Howson arrived in Durham in ‘great hope for a quiet end of a troubled life’, but quickly found himself mired in a series of local disputes. Some were of long standing. In 1630, when he successfully resisted the attempt of Samuel Harsnett^*, archbishop of York to conduct an archiepiscopal visitation of his diocese, he observed that the palatine jurisdiction of his see pre-dated the Reformation, when, he recalled, the inhabitants of the county palatine acknowledged only the authority of ‘God, the king and St Cuthbert’. Another squabble over the fees of the county muster-master had been running for 20 years.72 SP16/162/32; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 200; Durham (Palace Green), Mickleton and Spearman 2, ff. 303-6, 334; R.A. Marchant, Church Under the Law, 120, n.1. However, the most intractable disputes, among the cathedral chapter, were of Neile’s doing, making it difficult for Howson to resolve them equitably.

The first of these cathedral disputes concerned Peter Smart, a Calvinist conformist and one of the longest serving prebends at Durham. In the autumn of 1628 Smart expressed his disapproval, both in sermon and in print, of the ceremonial innovations introduced by Neile’s coterie among the chapter: John Cosin^†, Augustine Lindsell^* (later bishop of Hereford) and Eleazar Duncon. By the time Howson arrived, Smart was on the verge of being deprived by the York High Commission. Nevertheless, even amid requests for the vacant prebend, Howson confessed to Laud that he felt some sympathy for Smart:

I have sometimes pitied him, upon his protestation both of former and future conformity, and conceive that the many innovations in the church service, superstitiously urged, without authority (as they profess) from my predecessor, and displeasing yet to some other men well affected, draw him into these most intolerable actions.73 Cosin Corresp. ed. G. Ormsby (Surtees Soc. lii), 157-8; CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 343, 354; SP16/174/64; Acts of Durham High Commission, 201-8; K. Fincham and P. Lake, ‘Eccles. Policies of Jas. I and Chas. I’, Early Stuart Church ed. K. Fincham, 28-9.

Howson’s regard for Smart derived from their early acquaintance at Christ Church, and perhaps also from his own resentment of the changes Neile’s followers had made to the liturgy. It therefore served Howson’s purposes when Smart brought a suit against his enemies for idolatry in their lavish refurbishment of the cathedral. In September 1630, Howson enjoined the cathedral prebends to take more care in managing their revenues, and to ensure strict observance of the Prayer Book services. He attended regularly to ensure compliance, and when Cosin and Lindsell presumed to complain to Laud, now bishop of London, he scolded them at his visitation of the cathedral.74 Cosin Corresp. 167-8, 200-2, 204-5; CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 349, 541, 563; 1631-3, pp. 169, 190.

Early in 1632, Howson was tipped for the bishopric of Winchester, vacated by Neile’s removal to York. However, before he could be appointed to one of the wealthiest sees in England he died, on 6 Feb., apparently in London, as he was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, despite his own request that he should be interred in Oxfordshire. His tenure at Durham having been too short to have made him any significant profit, he left only £5 apiece to his children, and £50 to two grandchildren, provided they survived to the age of seven.75 Harl. 7000, f. 313r-v; C115/105/8143; SP16/211/45; PROB 11/161, f. 188r-v. His wife, who proved his will only nine days after his death, faced a dilapidation suit from her husband’s successor, Bishop Morton. However, Laud, who arbitrated the dispute, ordered that the damages awarded, amounting to £550, be borne by the previous incumbent, Richard Neile.76 Durham (Palace Green), Mickelton and Spearman 25, ff. 5v-7.