KING, John (1558/9-1621)

John King came from a well-connected Buckinghamshire family: according to his father’s memorial, his great-uncle, Robert King^†, was the last abbot of Oseney, Oxfordshire, and first bishop of the new diocese of Oxford.33 VCH Bucks. iv. 127; Lipscomb, i. 581. The Jacobean bishop secured a series of lucrative preferments early in his career, through service as chaplain to three powerful men: John Piers^†, archbishop of York’;34 J. King, Lectures Upon Jonas, Delivered at Yorke (1597), sig. *4v; p. 682. Henry Hastings^†, 3rd earl of Huntingdon, lord president of the council in the North;35 Ibid. sig.*5r-v. and Lord Keeper Thomas Egerton^* (later 1st Viscount Brackley). A royal chaplaincy and the deanery of Christ Church were followed, in 1611, by promotion to the see of London in place of George Abbot^*, newly elevated to the archbishopric of Canterbury. This placed two Calvinist conformists at the heart of the ecclesiastical establishment, but the vagaries of court politics and Jacobean diplomacy meant that they never quite achieved the dominant position they clearly assumed to be theirs by right, and in 1621 King’s death and Abbot’s unfortunate killing of a gamekeeper tipped the balance of the Church of England in another direction.

Early career to 1605

Educated under William Camden at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, King had a common surname, which has led to confusion about his early career. One early printed source assumes that the future bishop was ordained deacon in 1573 and priest in 1574, but the ordinand of 1573 was described as a BA of Magdalen College, Oxford, at which time King was still a pupil at Westminster School.36 Newcourt, i. 278n; CCEd. It was presumably the Magdalen man, then an Oxford MA, who was installed as a canon of St George’s Chapel, Windsor in 1580, at which time the future bishop had only recently proceeded BA. Moreover, the Windsor canon died in post in 1607.37 Al. Ox. (John King, MA 1575); Le Neve, Fasti (1854), iii. 397 For the same reason, the John King MA instituted as rector of the London parish of SS Anne and Agnes in 1580, and master of St. Mary Magdalene hospital, Colchester in 1582, cannot have been the future bishop, who did not proceed Master of Arts until February 1583.38 CCEd; Al. Ox. (John King, scholar of St. John’s, Oxf. 1565). However, King certainly held a fellowship at Christ Church throughout the 1580s, serving as university proctor during 1589-90.39 Al. Ox.; Oxford DNB, xxxi. 634; Christ Church, Oxf. i.b.1 (Chapter bk. 1549-1660), ff. 56-96; Newcourt, i. 278.

In August 1590, only weeks after the end of his term as proctor, King ‘went aside for a time far from the native place both of my birth and breed’ in order to serve as chaplain to Archbishop Piers of York (a former dean of Christ Church), who installed him as archdeacon of Nottingham, a sinecure he held for over 20 years.40 King, sig. *4; Fasti, iv. 19; viii. 81; CCEd. He proceeded BD at Oxford in 1591, when he was chosen as the respondent to three doctrinal theses argued in a public disputation; the subject of the debate was the Calvinist staple of predestination.41 Reg. Univ. Oxford vol. ii, part 1, ed. A. Clark (Oxf. Hist. Soc. x), 197. In 1594, at the behest of Piers and Lord President Huntingdon, he preached a series of 48 lectures at York Minster on the book of Jonah. These were published in 1597, alongside the sermon he gave at the archbishop’s funeral (1594) and another delivered to Huntingdon, whose chaplain he may have become after Piers’s death. The lord president’s own demise in December 1595 put paid to his hopes of preferment in the north. King presumably returned to Oxford, where he had already secured a benefice at Hamstead Norreys, Berkshire on the nomination of Henry Norris^†, 1st Lord Norreys. In the preface to his published sermons, he claimed he had originally intended to offer his labours to the memory of ‘my two deceased lords’, but by 1597 he had become chaplain to the new lord keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, who became the volume’s dedicatee.42 C. Cross, Puritan Earl, 276; King, sig. *4r-5v; CCEd.

Initial preferment, 1597-1611

In May 1597 Egerton, who controlled much of the crown’s ecclesiastical patronage, secured for King the rectory of St Andrew, Holborn, vacated by the promotion of the previous incumbent, Richard Bancroft^*, to the bishopric of London; he acquired a prebend at St Paul’s two years later, and apparently also became a royal chaplain.43 Bodl., Tanner 179, unfol.; Fasti, i. 57; Newcourt, i. 29. Thereafter, he became a regular member of the Lent preaching roster in the Chapel Royal, and also at Paul’s Cross, where a sermon-goer in 1602 captured his style, flattering the elderly queen, while gently chiding her puritan critics:

We may say these 44 years of her Majesty’s happy government is the calendar of earthly felicity, wherein the Gospel hath grown old, if not too old to some which begin to fall out of love with it, but were it as new as it was the first day of her Majesty’s entrance …44 P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Ct. (suppl. cal. 77, 80, 82, 87, 92); Diary of John Manningham ed. R.P. Sorlien, 112.

In the same year, King took his doctorate at Oxford, offering both a refutation of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and a level of hospitality which impressed his guests. His parishioners apparently paid the costs of his travel, and greeted his return by ringing the church bells.45 Reg. Univ. Oxf. ii. pt. 1, p. 202; Chamberlain Letters, i. 153, 159; Diary of John Manningham, 120. On the Sunday after the queen’s death, King was chosen to replace the scheduled preacher at court, praying that as King James

had a peaceable and quiet entrance, so He [God] would grant him a wise and happy government, and a blessed ending, whensoever He should take him from us; that it would please God to lay his root so deep that he may flourish a long time, and his branches never fail.

Presumably as a result of this sermon, King was the first royal chaplain sworn after James reached London – his master, unable to resist the obvious pun, termed him ‘king of preachers’.46 Diary of John Manningham, 211; H. King, A Sermon Preached at Pavls Crosse (1621), sig. A3; Ath. Ox. ii. 295. He attended the Hampton Court Conference on ecclesiastical reform in January 1604 – the only archdeacon present – and his notes, among others, were used by William Barlow^* (later bishop of Lincoln) in compiling the semi-official report of the debates; but as the most junior member of the hierarchy present, he did not speak.47 W. Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference (1604), sig. A3v, p. 2. He returned to Hampton Court in September 1606 as one of four preachers who attempted to persuade a group of leading Scots presbyterians of the merits of episcopacy, which the king was determined to impose upon the Kirk. An English commentator noted the sermons had received ‘good commendation’, but Andrew Melville, one of the Scots ministers obliged to listen, recalled that King had ‘made a most violent invective against the presbyterians, crying, “Down! Down with them all!”’48 J. King, The Fourth Sermon Preached at Hampton Court (1606); Chamberlain Letters, i. 232; Autobiog. and Diary of Mr Jas. Melville ed. R. Pitcairn (Wodrow Soc. 1842), 667; McCullough, 138.

In September 1604, when Thomas Ravis^*, dean of Christ Church, was nominated to the bishopric of Gloucester, the college fellows successfully petitioned for the appointment of King as his replacement: ‘there cannot a man of this foundation be named with whom we would join in the government, and whom the whole body of our students would more willingly obey’.49 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 309. The university chancellor, Thomas Sackville^*, 1st earl of Dorset, also selected King as his vice chancellor in June 1607, a post he held for four years. King proved to be a zealous steward of the university’s interests. After the bishop secured a royal grant of 60 loads of timber for the improvement of navigation on the Thames, Francis Norris^*, 2nd Lord Norreys, steward of the woods from which the timber was taken, complained that far more than this allocation was subsequently removed, claiming that ‘Dr King, who managed the affair, would have no less; following it, as he uses all affairs he takes in hand, with extreme violence and passion’.50 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 362; HMC Hatfield, xx. 35; xxi. 26, 35, 62, 65; Bodl. OUA, WPβ/21/4, ff. 85v, 86v. In 1608, King warned Oxford’s recorder, Thomas Wentworth^‡, not to meddle with the jurisdiction of his proctors. It was perhaps in response to this snub that, at the assizes the following year, the mayor usurped the vice chancellor’s place at the right hand of the judges, whereupon King protested, the dispute eventually reaching the Privy Council. When one of King’s few supporters on the corporation was dismissed from the aldermanic bench for selling the site of Wadham College too cheaply, it was presumably King himself who ensured that the university supported the campaign for his reinstatement.51 Hist. Univ. Oxf. ed. N. Tyacke, iv. 107, 109-10, 120.

King was no less solicitous in policing religious conformity. In May 1610 he informed Sir James Scudamore^‡ that he had questioned one of the latter’s relatives, then a student at Oxford, for failure to attend church, and required him to take the oath of allegiance. Two months later, a week before the passage of the 1610 Recusancy Act, King required all fellows, students and college servants to comply with the bill’s stipulation that all adults should take the oath. On learning that Catholics were gathering at a spring which had miraculously appeared under a gate at Christ Church on which a quarter of an executed Catholic priest was displayed, he had the spring stopped up, and reportedly ordered the priest’s remains to be flung into the river.52 C115/105/8516; SR, iv. 1162-4; Bodl. OUA, SP/E/6/1; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xii), 98-9.

Bishop and courtier 1611-15

Following the death in December 1609 of Thomas Ravis, then bishop of London, King was mentioned as a contender for promotion. However, the vacancy went instead to George Abbot^*, who was probably already being considered as Bancroft’s successor at Canterbury. King nevertheless remained a likely candidate for promotion, as his preaching at court continued to attract royal approval. Indeed, his sermon of 5 Nov. 1608 was published by royal command.53 HMC Downshire, ii. 204; J. King, A Sermon Preached at White-Hall (1608), title page; McCullough, (suppl. cal. 137, 144, 150-1). Not surprisingly, therefore, when Abbot was removed to Canterbury in April 1611, King was touted as his replacement at London. The incumbents of this large and fractious diocese usually had prior experience as a diocesan. Indeed, his rivals for the post – James Montagu^*, bishop of Bath and Wells; Richard Neile^*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield; and Samuel Harsnett^*, bishop of Chichester – had all been consecrated in 1608-9. However, King was presumably backed by Ellesmere and Abbot, who knew him well, having been an Oxford head of house himself until 1609. Furthermore, King’s administrative record as Oxford’s vice chancellor, and his rigorous enforcement of the recusancy laws, doubtless recommended him to James. Nevertheless, King expressed surprise at his selection, acknowledging it as ‘my most undeserved, and (the God of heaven knoweth) undesired preferment’.54 HMC Rutland, i. 428; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 107, 110; HMC Downshire, iii. 47, 56; SP14/68/102.

King was consecrated in September 1611, shortly after the end of his final term as vice chancellor. With a bishopric worth £1,000 a year, he could afford to resign all his other preferments. During the first years of his episcopate, the ecclesiastical agenda was dominated by the oath of allegiance, and the wider struggle against Catholicism, which he surveyed in a letter of February 1613 to the diplomat Sir Dudley Carleton^* (later Viscount Dorchester):

His Majesty beginneth to review his forces, and revive the hearts of his people thus far at least, that they please some care is had that we be not sleeping surprised. Our enemies are many and mighty both at home and abroad. Rome must be lady of the Church and Spain of nations, the one by long usurpation, the other by late promulgation. But He sitteth in heaven that setteth up and bringeth down as pleaseth Him.55 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc., vi. 56; SP14/72/60.

In May 1613 King sat in judgement in Star Chamber on two men who had accused Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton – the leading crypto-Catholic on the Council – of pleading with the king to grant religious toleration. The allegation was entirely plausible, but the purpose of the trial was not to disgrace Northampton, but to discredit the policy of toleration: according to a Catholic newsletter writer the bishop offered ‘many imprecations against it [toleration], and amongst the rest, that his eyes should sink into his head, rather than see such a day’, a statement authenticated by the Spanish ambassador, Sarmiento, who named Abbot and King as the chief persecutors of Catholics.56 Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 224-5; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 199. King was, in fact, a tireless assistant to Abbot in this respect, both over the detention, exile and execution of Catholic priests, and in the propaganda war against Rome, for which he retained the services of Catholic turncoats: the Jesuit John Salkeld lived in King’s household for several years, writing anti-Catholic polemics; while the bishop also gave £30 to two Venetian Carmelite monks who spent several years in England.57 HMC Downshire, iii. 331; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 169 and n.793, 218; B. Patterson, King Jas. VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, 119-20; Chamberlain Letters, i. 505.

King preached at the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine in February 1613, an alliance which put the Stuarts at the heart of the European Protestant interest. He likened the princess to ‘a vine ordained by God to grow up by the sides of an illustrious Palatine’, whose house was ‘founded upon the rock, the true faith and profession of the saving blood of Christ’. Turning to the king, he then issued the following warning:

Priests … and their proselytes, legions of recusants within this kingdom, neglect them not. They dig at the very root of sovereignty and regality, the allegiance of your subjects: they rob you of the hearts of your people. The more proselytes to Rome, the more aliens from England. … Recusants of our churches for the present … when their strength is not fully ripened, they will prove rebellants [sic] in their full moon.58 J. King, Vitis Palatina (1614), 29-30, 33.

The pan-Protestant cause at court waned in the summer of 1613, thanks to a confrontation over the nullification of the marriage of Robert Devereux^*, 3rd earl of Essex, whose wife, Frances Howard, wanted to marry the royal favourite, Robert Carr^*, Viscount Rochester (later earl of Somerset). Abbot and King, backed by their diocesan chancellors, refused to approve the decree, leaving the investigating commission deadlocked and forcing James to augment it with more sympathetic judges in order to secure an annulment.59 HMC Buccleuch, i. 140; Chamberlain Letters, i. 469; Birch, i. 267, 269; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 200; HMC Downshire, iv. 214. Catholics exulted at the fact that most of the precedents the bishops used to justify their stance were derived from Catholic Canon law, while, on the Continent, some Calvinist authors supported the view of Abbot and King that the divorce was invalid. Neile put heavy pressure on Abbot to attend the Howard-Carr wedding on 26 Dec. 1613, but King stayed away. His absence was noted, and there were claims the two bishops were called to explain their obduracy before the Privy Council.60 Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 238, 241-2, 260, 266; Chamberlain Letters, i. 496. In February 1614 King, Abbot and Ellesmere may have aimed to pay their adversaries back in Star Chamber, by voting to clear the puritan Sir Stephen Proctor from a charge that he had insinuated that the earl of Northampton had suppressed evidence of a Yorkshire conspiracy linked to the Gunpowder Plot.61 Chamberlain Letters, i. 508-9; Wentworth Pprs. ed. J.P. Cooper (Cam. Soc. 4th ser. xii), 61.

Following the arrival in London, in late 1613, of several Catholic MPs who had wrecked the opening of the Irish Parliament, there were plans for Bishop King to tender the oath of allegiance to the dissidents. However, as the oath had not been passed into Irish law, and the Members had come to England under compulsion, it was decided not to risk a reverse in the courts.62 CSP Ire. 1611-14, p. 424. An English Parliament convened in April 1614, during which session King and Abbot shared the proxies of three absentee bishops. Although he attended almost every day, King left little trace on the records of Parliament’s proceedings. On 14 Apr. he was one of the delegation ordered to attend a conference with the Commons about the bill to confirm the rights of Princess Elizabeth’s children to the succession, and he was included on two bill committees which reflected his interests, one for preservation of crown timber resources, the other for the Sabbath bill, the committee for which was also ordered to attend a conference with MPs.63 LJ, ii. 686a, 692b, 697b, 708b, 713b. He remained silent during the lengthy debates of 23 and 24 May about whether to meet the Commons for a conference about impositions, but – like all but one of the 17 bishops present – added his vote to the noes, who carried the day by 39 votes to 30.64 Ibid. 706b-7a; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 533. As the session collapsed, Convocation, at Abbot’s behest, agreed to raise a benevolence from the clergy. King contributed £110, and raise £1,270 across the diocese of London, a respectable yield amounting to 90 per cent of a clerical subsidy.65 HMC Downshire, iv. 431; E351/1950; For clerical subsidy yields, see SP14/133/13

The pan-Protestant party at court took heart over the next few years, as their enemies floundered in a sea of scandals, the first of which was the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury; Bishop King failed to persuade the leading suspect to plead guilty, which made it difficult to force the earl and countess of Somerset to divulge their role in the crime. Eighteen months later, Lady Ros, the wife of William Cecil^*, 16th Lord Ros, and daughter of the crypto-Catholic secretary of state Sir Thomas Lake^‡, was accused of blackmail. The scandal ultimately toppled Lake, and Lady Ros was committed to King’s custody pending further investigation, with instructions that she should see no-one except in his company.66 CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 318, 523; Birch, ii. 68; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 144. Meanwhile, at Oxford, King attended the university convocation of June 1615 which chose as high steward a rival of the Howard faction, Philip Herbert^*, earl of Montgomery.67 Bodl. OUA, NEP/supra/Reg. K, ff.164-5.

Ecclesiastical politics, 1615-21

King was not present at the confrontation between Abbot and one of the archbishop’s critics, John Howson^*, bishop of Oxford, who was accused of heterodox opinions in an audience before King James in 1615. Howson denied the accusation, and observed that he had no problems in working with the orthodox Bishop King, whose candidacy as dean of Christ Church he had supported during his fellowship there.68 ‘John Howson’s answers to Abp. Abbot’s accusations’ ed. N. Cranfield and K. Fincham, Cam. Misc. XXIX (Cam. Soc. 4th ser. xxxiv), 330, 336, 339; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 309. The changing factional balance at court did not make university patronage easier for Abbot or King, who backed one of the senior fellows for the provostship of Oriel College, Oxford in 1618, only to have their candidate swept aside by a junior fellow who was strongly supported by the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon^*, Lord Verulam (later Viscount St Alban).69 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 139-40; K. Fincham, ‘Expansion and Retrenchment, 1574-1660’, Oriel Coll., A Hist. ed. J. Catto, 115-16.

The summons in 1618 of the Synod of Dort (in the Netherlands), which was intended to condemn the anti-Calvinist theology associated with Jacobus Arminius, offered Abbot and King an opportunity to embarrass several of Arminius’ English sympathizers. However, King James, wary of upsetting the Church’s factional balance, took a bipartisan approach: in January 1618, English precedents for the conduct of theological debates was referred to a committee of bishops in which King and other Calvinists were in a minority.70 British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618-19) ed. A. Milton (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. xiii), 25. The Dutch Calvinists sealed their victory with the execution of the Arminian politician Jan van Oldenbarnevelt in May 1619; but when a play celebrating his fall was staged in London shortly thereafter, Bishop King was required to suppress it.71 SP14/110/18. It was also during this tense period that King was included on a commission to investigate allegations of the Catholic sympathies of another of Abbot’s old Oxford enemies, William Laud^* (later archbishop of Canterbury); the charges were eventually dismissed. King was more rigorous with a Spanish exile, whose heresies, he insisted, had struck at the root of faith; he sentenced the man to be burnt, and handed him over to the civil authorities.72 Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iv. 318-19; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 522; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 147. He also encouraged Anthony Munday to include an account of the refurbishment of many City churches in his continuation of John Stow’s Survey of London, in refutation of Catholic allegations that the established Church neglected the upkeep of its churches; Munday was unable to complete his researches before publication in 1618, but included a catalogue of early Stuart church improvements in his 1633 edition of the same work.73 J.F. Merritt, ‘Puritans, Laudians and the Phenomenon of Church-building in Jacobean London’, HJ, xli. 938-9.

King made his name as a preacher, appearing regularly in the pulpit for most of his life, and was celebrated as a preaching pastor. He conducted two visitations in person, and encouraged the catechizing of youths. He was also widely acknowledged for the encouragement and preferment he offered to junior clergy – in 1615 he ordained John Donne^‡, a friend he had met in Egerton’s household in the 1590s.74 Fincham, 253-65, 322; R.C. Bald, John Donne: a Life, 282-3, 302. There was some surprise in 1616 when King secured a prebendal stall in his own cathedral for his eldest son, Henry King^† (later bishop of Chichester), then aged only 23. Henry went on to become archdeacon of Colchester in the following year. The youth’s first sermon at Paul’s Cross in 1617 was judged to have gone ‘reasonably well, but nothing extraordinary, nor near his father’.75 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 44, 114; Fasti, i. 13, 50.

Bishop King enjoyed a reputation for charity: one of the trustees of the Charterhouse hospital, he helped to ensure that the generosity of its founder, Thomas Sutton, was properly secured. In 1613, he donated £40 towards the Bodleian library at Oxford, and added another £70 he had received as bequests to the diocese of London for charitable uses. In 1618, he sprang to the defence of the London Court of Orphans, censuring a cleric who had criticized the corporation’s administration of its vast funds.76 Chamberlain Letters, i. 323, 463; Hist. Univ. Oxf. 139-40; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 519.

On Christmas Day 1618, King preached a sermon to the ailing Queen Anne in her private lodgings at Hampton Court. In his funeral sermon, it was recalled that he had been close to the queen since her arrival in England, and he was one of the Protestant clerics who ministered to her (despite her secret Catholicism) in her final hours in March 1619.77 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 196-7, 219; McCullough, (suppl. cal. 231); Add. 72275, f. 76; H. King, A Sermon (1621), sig. A3. King James’s health failed a few weeks later, causing consternation which turned to relief when he began to recover. Bishop King preached a sermon of thanksgiving at Paul’s Cross, in which he compared Queen Anne to her biblical counterpart, Deborah, and rejoiced that ‘we have a king for counsel, and a prince (if God bless him) for strength, a king to instruct, and a prince to execute’; a large number of the dignitaries who attended were invited to a banquet at his London palace.78 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 227, 229-30; J. King, A Sermon of Publicke Thanks-giving (1619), 51, 54. He then went to see James at Royston, who ordered the sermon to be printed. This may explain why, only weeks later, he was tipped for promotion to the Privy Council, and even as Bacon’s replacement as lord chancellor. Nothing came of either rumour.79 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 230, 234; Add. 72253, f. 33.

Over the following months Bishop King acted as a conduit for royal pronouncements over the use of the title ‘supreme governor’ in daily prayers, and the curtailment of the excesses of women’s fashions. In March 1620 the king came to St Paul’s to hear a sermon in which the bishop pleaded for charitable donations for the repair of his dilapidated cathedral. ‘I never spake in such an auditory, never shall again’, King claimed, before extolling the City’s generosity in making large donations towards the construction of churches in Prague, Frankenthal in the Palatinate, and Virginia. He then asked his listeners, ‘have you forgotten the old rule … that charity beginneth at her own house?’80 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 268-9, 286-7, 299; J. King, A Sermon at Paules Crosse (1620), 48, 56.

From the summer of 1620, King was laid low by kidney stones.81 CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 151; Add. 72242, f. 90; Add. 72303, f. 191. In December, he lectured his clergy about avoiding discussion of the Spanish Match in their sermons, but he was too ill to attend the Parliament which convened in the New Year, and by March there was discussion about possible successors to his see.82 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 331; NLW, 9057E/939. Shortly after Lady Day 1621 (when his quarterly rents fell due) King had an operation to remove the stones from his bladder, but he died on 30 Mar., Good Friday. Buried, at his own request, in St Paul’s, under a gravestone marked simply resurgam, the ceremony was conducted by Thomas Morton^*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. King gave his eldest son first pick of 40 volumes from his library, and made generous bequests – from an estate said to be worth between £12,000 and £15,000 – to his four unmarried daughters.83 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 352, 360; Add. 72362, f. 45; PROB 11/137, ff. 285-6v.

Within weeks of King’s demise, rumours circulated that he had been reconciled to Rome on his deathbed, to the glee of his Catholic adversaries. At the end of the year, his son attempted to rebut these claims by publishing an examination of Thomas Preston, the priest alleged to have ministered to his father, who denied the charge, and indeed claimed he had never even met the bishop.84 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 376; H. King, A Sermon Preached at Pauls Crosse (1621), sigs. M1-3. Despite this rebuttal, the rumours continued to circulate, in England and abroad, for several years.85 Add. 72275, f. 133v; Add. 72362, f. 45; Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Pols. 1621-5 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxxiv), 162-3, 171. In 1642 Henry King was consecrated as bishop of Chichester, shortly after the bishops were excluded from Parliament; but he survived to take his seat in the Lords in 1661.86 Fasti, ii. 3.