JAMES, William (1542-1617)

A native of Cheshire, William James studied at Christ Church, Oxford before taking up a theology lectureship at Magdalen College. By 1572 he was presumably chaplain to the university chancellor, Robert Dudley^†, earl of Leicester, who nominated him as master of University College. He secured a charter of incorporation for his house, and insisted on investing the annual surplus from the college revenues rather than apportioning it to the fellows as a dividend, thereby funding several new fellowships. He also obtained contributions from donors, including Leicester.24 Darwall-Smith, 111-13. The earl secured James’s appointment as archdeacon of Coventry in 1577, and doubtless arranged for his protégé to preach before the queen on 19 Feb. 1578, when James delivered an invective against Catholics who disrupted the rebuilding of the church:

… answer me, O ye English Samaritans, O ye recusants that dishonour God and disobey the Lord’s anointed, shall a strange, pious Italian priest withdraw you? What hath the Church of England offended you? Wherein have we corrupted the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Who flieth to the touchstone of the Scriptures, you or we?

In the context of the Anjou Match, this polemic against any toleration of the English Catholic mission fitted neatly into Leicester’s political agenda.25 Fasti, x. 8; W. James, A Sermon Preached before the Queens Majestie (1578), sig. C5v.

In 1581-2 James took his turn as vice chancellor, in the aftermath of the furore caused by the challenge to the established church organized by the Jesuit Edmund Campion, who had had copies of his Decem Rationes distributed in the university church. He made several journeys to court about this issue, and was obviously considered to have performed well, as he was installed as dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford in 1584, thereby becoming head of the largest of the Oxford colleges, presumably with Leicester’s backing.26 Bodl., OUA, WPβ/21/4, f.54r-v. He ministered to his patron as Leicester lay dying in September 1588, and thereafter put the earl’s papers in order. In November 1589, James attacked the anonymous Marprelate tracts in a sermon delivered at Paul’s Cross, London, criticizing nonconformists for dwelling upon differences over ecclesiastical government, and insisting that the real enemy was Rome; he urged those spoiling for a fight to offer their services to the Huguenot cause rather than create domestic broils. Swiftly published with a dedication to Lord Keeper Sir Christopher Hatton^†, this sermon was clearly a bid for patronage from the conservative faction at court. The preface highlighted James’s dismay at the recent behaviour of the nonconformists:

it grieveth me to see the heaps of novelties that her Majesty’s most gracious reign, and in so plentiful a light of the Gospel, our inconstant islanders have brought into the world. It argueth that the envious man sleepeth not, but hath sowed tares, and that they fructify, and laboureth by all means, by sea and land, to make proselytes.27 Harington, 204; HMC Hatfield, vi. 444; James, Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, sigs. A2r-v, G2, H1r-v.

While subsequent events would establish that James still regarded Catholics as the most important threat to the Church of England, this signalled his willingness to work with those who had deplored Leicester’s patronage of puritan ministers.

James served another two years as vice chancellor (1590-2), but his aspirations now went beyond Oxford. In 1594 John Whitgift^†, archbishop of Canterbury, seems to have put him forward for the diocese of Lincoln. In the event, this vacancy went to William Chaderton^* (then bishop of Chester), but two years later, Whitgift and Thomas Sackville^*, Lord Buckhurst (chancellor of Oxford University and later 1st earl of Dorset), proposed James for the bishopric of Worcester. However, on this occasion Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, successfully intervened at a late stage in the negotiations on behalf of Thomas Bilson^*, whereupon James was consoled with the deanery of Durham.28 HMC Hatfield, vi. 117, 195, 197; B. Usher, Ld. Burghley and Episcopacy, 1577-1603, 134-5, 140-4. The new dean subsequently reminded Secretary of State Sir Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury) of his suitability for further promotion with a stream of correspondence about the short-term impact of dearth and plague in the north, and the more intractable local problem of recusancy and open disloyalty to the queen in time of war.29 CSP Dom. 1595-7, pp. 347-8, 355-6, 420-1, 542-3. Moreover, in the summer of 1598 he chaired a Chancery inquiry into the grand lease of the episcopal coal mines, through which the Newcastle hostmen dominated the Tyneside coal trade. The hostmen were exonerated from any misconduct, and in return they offered the crown a duty on all coal shipped from the Tyne, initially worth £6,000 p.a.30 APC, 1597-8, pp. 317-19; 1598-9, pp. 199, 295-6; S.M. Healy, ‘Tyneside Lobby on the Thames’, Newcastle and Gateshead Before 1700 ed. D. Newton and A.J. Pollard, 222-3.

Whitgift included James on a list of possible candidates for the bishopric of Norwich in October 1602, but, his own efforts notwithstanding, James was overlooked for promotion until January 1606, when the death of Matthew Hutton^*, archbishop of York, held out the prospect of sweeping changes in the northern province. In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, James suddenly began sending Cecil, now earl of Salisbury, copious information on the subject of northern Catholics. However, he left it to Sir John Ferne^‡, joint secretary of the council in the North, to put the case for his promotion. Ferne told Salisbury that Hutton’s obvious replacement was Tobie Matthew^*, bishop of Durham, and that the latter’s departure from Durham would create a vacancy for James, whom he described as ‘very grave, wise and of honest conversation unreprovable, a stout oppugner of papists … an excellent magistrate in that country’.31 CSP Dom, 1603-10, pp. 269, 281, 286-7, 289, 294; Durham QS Rolls, 149; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 21-2; Usher, 180-1. Accordingly, in April 1606 Scotland’s lord treasurer, George Home, earl of Dunbar [S], assured the dean of Salisbury’s support. However, one of the Newcastle hostmen, Henry Anderson^‡, subsequently offered a malicious complaint about James’s stewardship of the dean and chapter estates. As a result, it was not until September 1606 that James finally secured the bishopric. Even then, James was forced to pay a price for his advancement: he leased his Strand palace, Durham House, to the king’s cousin, Ludovic Stuart^*, 2nd duke of Lennox [S] (later duke of Richmond); agreed that the deanery would be held by Prince Henry’s tutor, Adam Newton, as a sinecure; and appointed Thomas Murray, tutor to the duke of York (Charles Stuart^*, later prince of Wales), as master of Sherburn hospital, co. Durham. However, even with these conditions, diocesan revenues of £1,800 a year made this a lucrative promotion.32 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 125, 141; Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 90-1; CSP Dom, 1603-10, pp. 340, 417.

Preoccupied by administration, James arrived almost four weeks late for the parliamentary session which began in November 1606, assigning his proxy to Richard Vaughan^*, bishop of London, Martin Heton^*, bishop of Ely and William Barlow^*, bishop of Rochester in the interim. He was named to only one bill committee before Christmas, on a measure to settle the title of Sir William Smith^‡ to the manor of Whadborough, Leicestershire, which Smith had purchased from All Souls’ College, Oxford.33 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 339-40; LJ, ii. 449a, 468a; HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 355. In a poorly reported session, James is not recorded as having spoken, but was named to a wide range of bill committees. One of the most important of these was the committee for the bill to repeal the ‘hostile laws’ passed against Scots, on which he was included despite his private reservations about the proviso to repeal cross-border extradition. As in previous sessions, puritan MPs promoted legislation designed to frustrate the attempts of Richard Bancroft^*, archbishop of Canterbury, to force them to conform, which were then vetoed by the bishops in the upper House. On 30 Apr. James was one of those ordered to scrutinize the bill to prevent nonconformists from being deprived for refusing to subscribe to the 1604 Canons, which was left to sleep in committee.34 LJ, ii. 503a, 520a; RICHARD BANCROFT. James was also named to committees for several bills relating to crown revenues: confirmation of grants of former crown lands held under defective titles; a similar measure clearing the endowments of the London livery companies from defective title proceedings; and a scheme to enfranchise crown copyholders.35 LJ, ii. 471b, 479a, 494a, 524b. He was included on the committee for a bill to remedy a drafting defect in a 1559 Act for an exchange of lands between the crown and the archbishopric of Canterbury, and private bills to confirm the endowment of a lectureship on a Devonshire benefice and a Gloucestershire grammar school run by Queen’s College, Oxford.36 Ibid. 489a, 504a, 518a.

When James returned to his see, he supported the efforts of Dunbar and Francis Clifford^*, 4th earl of Cumberland to impose order on the border shires. This was despite the fact that he deplored the abolition of the process for extraditing criminals to Scotland in the recent hostile laws repeal Act (a problem he conceded could be resolved by conscripting the worst offenders into the Irish army).37 HMC Hatfield, xix. 300, 377-8; CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 358, 388-9; Original Letters Relating to the Eccles. Affairs of Scotland ed. B. Botfield (Bannatyne Club), i. 112-13. In particular, he furthered a crackdown on recusants, which had begun during his absence at Westminster with the indictment of 400 Catholics at the Durham quarter sessions. In August 1607, he and the judges summoned 20 recusant gentry to the Durham assizes. The six men who appeared all took the oath of allegiance, but the bishop insisted they were ‘nothing altered from their Romish superstition’, and told the king that ‘they can no way be thought worthy of that great and undeserved favour which they so plentifully receive at your Majesty’s hands’. This level of compliance was no defence against further proceedings, however, and shortly before the Michaelmas quarter sessions, one of the Catholics who had taken the oath, Sir William Blakiston, had his goods distrained for non-payment of recusancy fines. Blakiston resisted the seizures, for which he was indicted for riot, while several other gentry were charged with harbouring recusant servants, which made them liable to a fine of £10 a month.38 Durham QS Rolls, 162-7, 171, 330-6; Orig. Letters Relating to the Eccles. Affairs of Scotland, i. 111-12; HMC Hatfield, xix. 378.

The papal ruling forbidding Catholics from taking the oath of allegiance led Bishop James and his fellow members of the northern high commission to cite eight recusant gentry before them in June 1608. Two refused to take the oath a second time, and were imprisoned for committing a praemunire under the 1606 Recusancy Act. The bishop told the king that other Catholics had loyally denounced such ‘insolent and proud popery’. The chief problem, he insisted, was the level at which recusancy fines were set, which was far lower than the expense of public office the Catholic gentry would have borne if they had conformed.39 Orig. Letters Relating to the Eccles. Affairs of Scotland, 148-50.

One problem that James was forced to grapple with early in his episcopate was the assignment in 1605 of the crown’s Durham manors of Brancepeth, Raby and Barnard Castle to the infant duke of York. Several of the bishop’s local enemies, eager for royal patronage, became involved in the administration of these estates. In 1607 James offended one of them, Henry Saunderson, constable of Brancepeth Castle, after he indicted the latter’s servant for poaching in the castle park. Saunderson claimed the game was a perquisite of office, and was backed by his patron, Gilbert Talbot^*, 7th earl of Shrewsbury.40 Durham QS Rolls, 162-3, 168; LPL, ms 709, f. 48. James again clashed with Saunderson in 1609, over allegations that the bishop’s allies had mishandled sales of wood from Prince Charles’s Durham estates. The bishop insisted he had defended Salisbury – then, as lord treasurer, using timber sales to pay off royal debts – from all blame, but was dismayed when Salisbury responded by ordering Sir John Claxton, one of the recusants James had been harrying, to hold an inquiry. This inquiry was superseded by a commission composed of the bishop’s allies, who blamed the irregularities on Saunderson, who thereupon accused James of hindering the collection of the aid for Prince Henry.41 HMC Hatfield xxi. 88, 119, 132, 134, 136; CSP Dom, 1603-10, p. 554. The bishop also encountered difficulties with the townsmen of Durham, who, having long aspired to greater control of their own affairs, secured a charter from Bishop Matthew in 1602. Following a personal appeal to King James, this charter had been confirmed by the crown in February 1606, shortly before Matthew’s departure. Bishop James was clearly unhappy with this situation, and in October 1609 his diocesan officials provoked a confrontation by interrupting the mayoral election; they were ejected from the city tollbooth and the corporation lodged a protest with the Privy Council. The bishop complained to Salisbury of ‘my crabbed neighbours the townsmen of Durham, who in their pride usurp things never granted, and challenge things not grantable’. He also brought an Exchequer suit against the corporation.42 C66/1679; E112/79/185; Durham Civic Memorials ed. C.E. Whiting (Surtees Soc. clx), 19; SP14/50/72; A.W. Foster, ‘Struggle for Parlty. Representation for Durham, 1600-41’, Last Principality ed. D. Marcombe, 179.

The 1610 parliamentary sessions – better reported than that of 1607 – show Bishop James taking an active role in the Lords, which he attended regularly. Both were dominated by the lord treasurer’s plan for fiscal reform, known to posterity as the Great Contract. James was one of the large delegation who heard Salisbury outline the crown’s financial needs at the start of the session, and on 18 Apr. he was among those sent to ascertain whether the Commons’ demand to include wardship in the Contract had been accepted by the king. He was subsequently included on two delegations which relayed the Commons’ latest offers to King James, but the heads of an agreement were only concluded on 20 July.43 LJ, ii. 550b, 579b, 603a, 618a; E.N. Lindquist, ‘Failure of the Great Contract’, JMH, lvii. 635-6. Three days later, on the final day of the session, Bancroft made a belated plea for compensation for the abolition of wardship rights held by the bishops, which had been overlooked in the negotiations thus far. James, the only bishop who enjoyed a significant revenue from this source, added his own protest that the loss would render him incapable of covering the costs of the assizes and quarter sessions in the palatinate. Salisbury, however, insisted the cost involved was no more than £40 p.a., and ruled out any compensation for loss of fees by diocesan officials.44 Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 164-5, 250-1.

By the start of the autumn session, public opinion had turned against the Contract. Bishop James, sick during the opening weeks of the session, returned in time to attend a conference at which the Commons were asked whether some other form of supply might be forthcoming. When the Lords debated this question among themselves the next day, James supported Salisbury’s determination to give a lead before the Commons had a chance to reject the proposal: ‘there is no question but it is fit to give the king somewhat, for aliquid debetur [somewhat is owed] to the king as our sovereign, father and master’.45 Ibid. 172.

The bishops were, as usual, kept busy during the spring session blocking puritan legislation sent up from the Commons. On 30 Apr., when the Lords gave a second reading to the bill to require pluralists and non-resident ministers to provide an adequate stipend for their curates, Bishop James insisted that canon law was already strict enough on the subject, and agreed with George Abbot^*, bishop of London (later archbishop of Canterbury), that the bill should be rejected. However, it was committed regardless. James was one of those ordered to consider fresh measures to deal with the problems of pluralism and non-residence, but the bill never completed its passage through the Lords.46 Procs. 1610, i. 73, 226; LJ, ii. 584a, 587a; RICHARD BANCROFT. He was also named to the committee for the ecclesiastical Canons bill, the progress of which was delayed until it ran out of time.47 LJ, ii. 611a. The final item of puritan legislation on which Bishop James expressed his opinion was the bill to grant jurisdiction over scandalous ministers to the common law courts. Abbot insisted that the court of high commission was perfectly competent to handle this matter, while James dwelt upon technicalities, claiming that there were nine defects in the draft bill, and that it had met with considerable opposition in the Commons; he was included on the bill committee, which never reported.48 Procs. 1610, i. 134-5; LJ, ii. 641b. The only success puritan MPs enjoyed was in respect of their complaint against Dr John Cowell, Bancroft’s vicar-general, whose legal textbook was condemned for the absolutist tone of some if its definitions. Bishop James was one of those ordered to attend the conference at which the Commons laid out their complaints.49 LJ, ii. 557b; S.B. Chrimes, ‘Constitutional Ideas of Dr John Cowell’, EHR, lxiv. 461-87.

Papal condemnation of the oath of allegiance required a proportionate response, which came in the form of a bill requiring everyone over 16 to retake the oath of allegiance – a policy James had already begun to implement in Durham. Having already taken the oath himself, he was named to the bill committee, along with most of the House, on 7 June.50 LJ, ii. 608b, 645a. The same issue was discussed in a more specific form on 2 Apr., at the third reading of the bill to reverse the 1601 attainder against Sir John Davies, who had taken the oath of allegiance and attended divine service, but declined to take communion. On this evidence, James observed, ‘we cannot account of him as a sound Protestant’, but he was prepared to support the bill, which passed.51 Procs. 1610, ii. 62-3, 207. This was not intended to create a precedent, and James was later included on the committee for the bill to require all those wishing to be naturalized or have attainders reversed to take communion and swear the oaths of supremacy and allegiance.52 LJ, ii. 606b.

Throughout the session, James was involved with a number of issues of northern interest. On 19 Feb. he was named to the committee for a bill to confirm the composition for entry fines Salisbury had agreed with copyholders on the crown manor of Wakefield, Yorkshire. He was later named to committees for a bill to regulate the season for moor-burning in the northern uplands; and two private bills relating to the estates of the Lancashire magnate, William Stanley^*, 6th earl of Derby. As an interested party, he was named to the committee for the bill for remanding on the northern borders, and ordered to attend a conference with the Commons about proposed amendments.53 Ibid. ii. 553b, 592b, 601a, 616b, 619a, 634b; Procs. 1610, i. 123. The four northern shires had customarily been exempted from parliamentary subsidies because of their role in defending the Scottish border, but the repeal of the hostile laws in 1607 had terminated this latter responsibility, and on 11 July, at the motion of Sir Nicholas Saunders^‡ and Sir Edwin Sandys^‡, the Commons resolved to omit this concession in the subsidy bill. The Northumberland MP Sir Ralph Gray^‡ unsuccessfully attempted to reinstate the exemption three days later and, on 18 July, Bishop James moved the Lords that county Durham ‘may be freed from payment of the subsidy’. His plea was dismissed by Salisbury, who, while conceding that one subsidy was but ‘a drop in a cistern of water’ given the size of the crown’s debts, insisted ‘that it [the subsidy] may receive no fraction, though that the matter be not great’. The earl also reminded the House that ‘the times usually heretofore are altered’ since the abolition of the border.54 Procs. 1610, i. 149; CJ, i. 448a, 449b; ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 24r-v; Foster, ‘Parlty. Representation’, 177-8.

Salisbury’s curt dismissal of James’s plea for the exemption of Durham from the subsidy undermined his local standing, and was a poor requital for his own willingness to assist the earl’s personal interests: in 1608 Salisbury had extended his Strand mansion into the grounds of Durham House, demolishing the bishop’s stables, but making various improvements to the property by way of compensation. James had allowed this, and secured the consent of the local gentry in Durham, but in 1610 Salisbury proposed legislation to confirm the transaction.55 HMC Hatfield, xx. 226; xxi. 73, 118; CSP Dom, 1603-10, pp. 544, 555. The Durham House bill was first read in the Lords on 16 June 1610, and while James complained that he had not been consulted about the draft, which contained minor defects including the omission of annual rent due to the bishopric, he made light of these at the second reading. On this occasion it was Archbishop Bancroft complained that the value of the property would be reduced by the loss of part of its grounds, but this complaint was answered by Salisbury, who insisted that a rent of £40 p.a. would cover any loss. Archbishop Matthew reported the bill, with amendments, the following day, and it was enacted at the end of the session.56 LJ, ii. 614b, 616a, 617b; Procs. 1610, i. 107-8, 241-2.

After the dissolution of February 1611, James received royal orders to take Lady Arbella Stuart with him when he returned to Durham, to keep her apart from her husband William Seymour^*, Lord Beauchamp (later 2nd earl and 1st marquess of Hertford). She fell sick at East Barnet, Hertfordshire, where James was permitted to leave her; a subsequent attempt to escape to France meant that she never reached the bishopric.57 CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 16-17; R. Norrington, In the Shadow of the Throne, 115-26. During his absence from London, James was required to lease Durham House, on the Strand, to Thomas Howard^*, 1st earl of Suffolk, who had sold his own London property to finance the building of Audley End, in Essex.58 Harl. 7002, f. 111; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 319.

The taxpayers of the Durham palatinate clearly shared James’s misgivings about their new liability for parliamentary taxation, contributing only £170 towards the 1610 subsidy – considerably less than the £420 raised for the privy seal loan of 1611-12.59 E401/2415-16; Add. 27877, f. 46. James’s relations with Durham corporation remained fraught: in March 1611 the mayor prevented his bailiff from opening the spring fair, warning ‘you shall not bear a staff in this city but at your peril’.60 Durham QS Rolls, 206-7. In 1612 the bishop brought a dilapidations suit against Archbishop Matthew, winning £170 compensation, and an Exchequer suit against trustees acting for the latter’s son Sir Tobie Matthew^‡, who had received in 1604 a lease of lands in the palatine manor of Northallerton, Yorkshire. Sir Tobie had sold his interest in these properties to the sitting tenants for £4,000, but James’s counsel argued that his grant had been far larger than the rental value of £60 p.a. authorized, impeaching the profits of the bishopric.61 Borthwick, Abp.3B; E112/137/1255.

Perhaps because of indifferent health – he spent the spring of 1612 taking the waters at Bath – James played a less active part in the 1614 Parliament than he had in the previous assembly, although he attended the Lords almost every day, despite having temporarily lost Durham House to the earl of Suffolk.62 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 330; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 113; LJ, ii. 714b; HMC Hastings, iv. 282. He was ordered to attend the conference about the bill confirming the rights of Princess Elizabeth’s children to the succession, and a handful of bill committees, including those for preservation of timber and the endowment of Monmouth grammar school.63 LJ, ii. 692b, 697b, 711b. He made only one recorded speech, on 24 May, during the Lords’ debate about whether to hear the Commons’ case against impositions. James moved to ask the king for authorization before proceeding to a conference, and, like all the bishops except Matthew, he voted against the motion, which was rejected by 39 votes to 30.64 HMC Hastings, iv. 263; Chamberlain Letters, i. 533.

Aside from impositions, the other issue raised in the Commons in which James showed an interest was a petition for the enfranchisement of county Durham, promoted by the bishop’s old adversary Sir Henry Anderson^‡, now one of the Members for Newcastle. On 9 Apr. Sir Edwin Sandys moved to consider this petition, which Anderson justified on the grounds that landowners were ‘now bound to pay subsidies, and yet have no benefit of the general pardon’. Sandys reported from committee on 14 May, when he claimed that Durham’s palatine jurisdiction gave the bishop ‘great power to oppress’. Bishop James, he said, had informed the committee that ‘all the principal men, noble gentlemen and grand jury’ were against the petition, and asked to send counsel to put the case against enfranchisement. By contrast, Anderson insisted ‘that all the country [Durham] groans under the burden of the government there’, and offered instances of arbitrary imprisonment and abuse of fines and forfeitures, particularly recusancy fines. A bill was tabled by William Jenison^‡, Newcastle’s other MP, and debated at its second reading on 31 May, when Anderson challenged James to attend the committee and answer a list of grievances against his administration. This confrontation was averted by the dissolution on 7 June.65 Procs. 1614 (Commons), 39-40, 235-7, 243-4, 389, 397; Foster, ‘Parlty. Representation’, 182-5.

One of Anderson’s charges against the bishop was that James was soft on Catholics. This was unjustified: in April 1613 the bishop threatened his diocesan registrar with dismissal for having a recusant wife; in 1615 there were mass indictments of recusants at the Epiphany and Easter quarter sessions; and the records of the diocesan court of high commission, which survive for 1614-17, indicate concerted efforts to suppress recusancy. While investigating a Catholic clique said to have been involved in the Gunpowder Plot, James pleaded with Abbot, now archbishop of Canterbury, to move the king ‘to alter the lenity towards the priests who … thirst after nothing but blood’.66 Durham (Palace Green), Add. 866, ff. 13-14v; Durham QS Rolls, 233-4, 245-9; Durham Cathedral Archives, DCD/D/SJB/7; CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 289, 301-4.

By 1615, England’s Catholics had acquired a powerful ally in the form of the royal favourite Robert Carr^*, earl of Somerset, who purchased the manors of Brancepeth and Raby from the crown in 1613, and was appointed lord lieutenant of Durham in January 1615. Bishop James, having hitherto fulfilled this latter role without the title, was dismayed at the news.67 M.E. James, Fam., Lineage and Civil Soc. 151-3; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 270; Sainty, Lts. of Counties, 1585-1642, p. 19. On learning that the earl had taken two of his leading Catholic adversaries, Sir John Claxton and Sir William Blakiston, to the Garter feast in 1615, he expressed concern to Somerset’s servant John Packer^‡. News of Somerset’s arrest in November led to spontaneous celebrations among the earl’s Durham tenants, who had been complaining about the spoil of woods on his lands, and anticipated better treatment once the estates reverted to Prince Charles.68 CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 291, 320, 323, 328; SP14/81/58.

Reports of the bishop’s demise circulated in London early in 1617, but James survived long enough to host the king at Bishop’s Auckland on 17 and 18 April.69 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 56-7; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 437; Durham (Palace Green), Add. 866, f. 57. When the latter entered Durham on the following morning, the corporation greeted him with verses referring to their unfair treatment at their bishop’s hands:

… what our royal James did grant herein, [the 1606 charter]
William our bishop hath oppugnant [sic] been.
Small task to sway down smallness, where man’s might
Hath greater force than equity or right …70 Durham Civic Memorials, 22-3.

The bishop, weakened by kidney stones and strangury (a bladder infection) died in his palace at Bishop’s Auckland in the early hours of 12 May. The news was swiftly relayed to the king at Berwick, and by the next morning it was agreed to appoint Richard Neile^*, bishop of Lincoln (later archbishop of York) as his successor.71 Durham (Palace Green), Add. 866, ff. 57v-8; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 77.

James was buried at Durham Cathedral on 8 July. Although he had urged his executor to avoid any ‘pomp or ceremony’ in his will of 2 Oct. 1615, one contemporary noted a large number of funeral blacks. He bequeathed property in the bishopric to his under-age sons Francis and Timothy, and the lease of a rectory in Oxfordshire to his grandson John James, heir to his deceased eldest son. The contents of the chapels at Durham House and Bishop’s Auckland, which he had refurbished, were left to his successor. Having spent over £2,000 on maintaining the episcopal estate and defending its rights at law, he aimed to spare his relatives a dilapidations suit – a hope which was to be disappointed. During the minority of his heirs, administration of his estate was granted to the overseers of his will: his brother Edward James, and the Durham canon Ferdinando Morecroft.72 Durham (Palace Green), Add. 866, f. 59v; PROB 11/129, ff. 462-4; Harington, 206-7; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, v. 146.