MAWE, Leonard (c.1574-1629)

Mawe’s background was relatively comfortable. His father Simon, an East Anglian gentleman, owned lands in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire as well as Suffolk, and served on local commissions concerning sewers and piracy.19 PROB 11/117, ff. 151v-2; CPR, 1599-1600 ed. C. Smith, S.R. Neal and C. Leighton (L. and I. Soc. cccxxxii), 274; C181/1, f. 83v. Mawe was also supported during his early career by his uncle, Robert Mawe, a successful lawyer who became recorder of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.20 PROB 11/156, f. 152; Vis. Suff. 152; Al. Cant. Having held a scholarship at Peterhouse, Cambridge for six years, in 1594 Mawe was the first beneficiary of a new college rule allowing for fellows to be pre-elected, in anticipation of an imminent vacancy. However, this system proved problematic. Although Mawe officially took up his fellowship in the following year, the man whom he replaced did not actually resign until 1597. Moreover, in 1600 the crown nominated a new fellow-probationer, even though there were already two such appointees waiting for vacancies to arise, whereupon Mawe joined in the college’s protest.21 Biog. Reg. of Peterhouse Men, ii. 165, 170-1, 176; HMC Hatfield, x. 224.

Mawe stood unsuccessfully for a university proctorship in 1601, being described by his Peterhouse supporters as ‘a man every way fit and sufficient to discharge the place, and against whom no exception is taken for life or learning’.22 Hatfield House, CP 136/91. Three years later, he was granted a royal dispensation to retain his fellowship despite his recent appointment as vicar of Mildenhall, Suffolk, which had boosted his income beyond the limits normally allowed under the college statutes.23 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 158; Biog. Reg. of Peterhouse Men, ii. 130. As proctor in 1610, Mawe caused controversy by publicly criticizing the recent parliamentary bill against pluralism and non-resident clergy, effectively endorsing earlier attacks on this measure in the Lords. Word of his intervention reached the Commons in July, during the debates on the subsidy bill, whereupon the enraged Members briefly considered scrapping the clause which exempted Cambridge University from this tax. Mawe apparently offered to retract his comments, but in the event the House was satisfied by an assurance that he had already been punished by the vice chancellor.24 CJ, i. 449b, 450b, 453b; Procs. 1610, i. 229-35; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 129-30.

This episode raised Mawe’s profile in government circles, and in June 1611 the university was instructed to admit him as a doctor of divinity, even though he did not hold the appropriate bachelor’s degree. Just three months later, he was appointed a canon of Wells Cathedral.25 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 41; Fasti, v. 32. Mawe was shortlisted for the mastership of Peterhouse in 1615, and secured the post two years later. Already a regular preacher at court, he became one of Prince Charles’s chaplains around early 1618, and one of James I’s chaplains by 1621, though Cambridge remained his principal arena.26 Biog. Reg. of Peterhouse Men, ii. 288; McCullough (suppl. cal. 206, 213, 225). As vice chancellor in 1621, he delivered a petition to the king, complaining that the future of the university press was threatened by patents awarded to rival printers in London. When James’s concessions failed to rein in the Londoners, it was presumably Mawe who devised new regulations to support the Cambridge press and encourage the expansion of the university library.27 C.H. Cooper, Annals of Camb. iii. 142-5.

By now Mawe was becoming known for his Arminian leanings. Reputedly appointed one of the prince’s chaplains to help reduce the Calvinist influences within Charles’s circle, as vice chancellor he declined in July 1622 to punish William Lucy, a chaplain to George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, for preaching a provocatively pro-Arminian university sermon.28 P. Heylyn, Short View of the Life and Reign of King Charles (1658), 17-18; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 46; Birch, ii. 319-20. Not surprisingly, he was chosen in the following year to attend Charles in Spain during his marriage negotiations, the king recognizing that Mawe would be content to follow his instructions to conduct services in Madrid which were ‘decent and agreeable to the purity of the primitive Church, and yet as near the Roman form as can lawfully be done’. Mawe reportedly baulked at the extent to which he was expected to avoid causing any offence to the Catholic population, but James overruled his objections.29 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 482; Heylyn, 18-19; H. Ellis, Orig. Letters Illustrative of Eng. Hist. ser. 1, iii. 132; D.M. Bergeron, King Jas. and Letters of Homoerotic Desire, 156-7. In the event, this mission proved to be both perilous and frustrating. Having sailed to Spain in April 1623 with his fellow chaplain, Matthew Wren^† (later bishop of Ely), Mawe was thrown by his mule near Burgos, ‘lighting full on [his] head and shoulders’. When he eventually reached Madrid, he was denied access to Charles at the royal palace, and virtually confined to the English embassy for the duration of his stay. Nevertheless, the trip served to cement his anti-puritan reputation, and strengthened his relationship with the prince.30 G. Redworth, Prince and the Infanta, 95; R. Wynn, ‘Account of the Journey of Prince Chas.’s Servants into Spain’, Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi II ed. T. Hearne (Oxf. 1729), 319; D’Ewes Diary, 1622-4 ed. E. Bourcier, 128, 136-7.

Charles retained Mawe as his chaplain when he became king in 1625, and two months later granted him the mastership of Cambridge’s largest college, Trinity. During the next four years, Mawe greatly improved the college’s finances, despite a drop in student numbers, and reputedly promoted fellows who shared his churchmanship.31 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 539; T. Fuller, Worthies of Eng. iii. 171; W.W.R. Ball, Trin. Coll., Camb. 72-3. Now very much an establishment figure, he delivered an obsequious speech to the Canterbury Convocation in February 1626, comparing the greater and lesser clergy to stars of differing magnitudes, and concluding that the lower House of Convocation should be guided entirely by the bishops in its deliberations.32 Recs. of Convocation, viii. 156. Unsurprisingly, four months later he also threw all his weight behind the king’s request for the duke of Buckingham to be elected chancellor of Cambridge University. Acting with Wren, who had succeeded him as master of Peterhouse, he helped to win over the other college heads with a display of ‘vehemency and … confidence of authority’, then secured the unanimous backing of the Trinity fellows by browbeating them individually until they all fell into line. These interventions proved to be vitally important, since Buckingham still won only by a narrow margin. The duke dined at Trinity in March 1627, and Mawe joined the exclusive circle of clergy regularly tipped for elevation to a bishopric.33 Cooper, iii. 187-8, 198; Corresp. of John Cosin ed. G. Ornsby, i (Surtees Soc. lii), 101; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 448.

Mawe was finally appointed bishop of Bath and Wells in July 1628, in succession to, and at the request of, William Laud^* (later archbishop of Canterbury), the effective leader of English anti-Calvinism, who had just been translated to the diocese of London. He was consecrated six weeks later alongside another of Laud’s protégés, Walter Curle^*, and the Arminian controversialist Richard Montagu^*, respectively the new bishops of Rochester and Chichester.34 CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 211, 268; J. Davies, Caroline Captivity of the Church, 41. Curiously, for a man who had apparently long sought such a promotion, Mawe now proved reluctant to embrace it, possibly because his health was failing. A new master of Trinity had already been chosen to fill the anticipated vacancy, but although Mawe assumed administrative control of his diocese, he made no effort to leave Cambridge, and opted to retain the mastership for the time being. While such absenteeism was not unprecedented, he was the only bishop of Bath and Wells during this period apart from Laud not to be appointed a Somerset magistrate, a clear indication of his physical absence from the county.35 CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 212, 393; HMC Wells, ii. 388-9; C66/2495.

Mawe attended the Lords assiduously during the 1629 parliamentary session, missing only the sittings of 10, 19 and 21 Feb., but otherwise left no mark on its proceedings. A few months later he issued visitation articles for his diocese, drawing heavily on the popular set issued 24 years earlier by Richard Vaughan^*, bishop of London, which did not reflect Mawe’s own churchmanship. The visitation was conducted that summer by his vicar general, Arthur Duck^‡, in the bishop’s absence.36 Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, I ed. K. Fincham (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. i), 26; Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, II ed. idem (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. v), 258; Som. RO, D/D/Ca 277A. Mawe was still firmly ensconced as master of Trinity when he drew up his will on 31 May 1629. In this he left £300 towards the construction of a new chapel at Peterhouse, ‘as testimony of my thankfulness unto my ancient nurse, from which I received so many blessings and favours’, but tactlessly made no bequests to his current college or his diocese. Despite claiming that he possessed few worldly goods, he assigned more than £1,000 and property in Suffolk, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire to his family and servants, along with his library of books in ‘Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, French, Spanish or divinity, philosophy [and] history’.37 PROB 11/156, f. 152r-v.

In around early August 1629 the king sent Mawe a sharp verbal message to quit Trinity and apply himself to his episcopal duties. Somewhat affronted, the latter sought and received written confirmation from the new chancellor of Cambridge, Henry Rich^*, 1st earl of Holland, noting on 11 Aug. that he would have been more ready to comply if Charles’s wishes had been delivered initially in ‘the right and ordinary way, and not by such a man and in that disgraceful manner as it was’. Nevertheless, he still declined to take up residence in Somerset, obtaining a royal dispensation on medical grounds.38 SP16/148/41. Mawe finally left Cambridge later that month. It is unclear whether he ever formally resigned the Trinity mastership, though his failing health effectively resolved this issue. He died on 2 Sept. 1629 at a kinsman’s house in Chiswick, Middlesex, and was buried in the local church.39 P.M. Hembry, Bps. of Bath and Wells 1540-1640, p. 222.