MORTON, Thomas (1565-1659)

Morton was a controversialist of international repute, a citizen of the ‘republic of letters’ whose scholarly contacts, direct and indirect, spanned the length of Europe. At home his promotion within the episcopal hierarchy was perhaps delayed, but by no means dashed, by his espousal of Calvinist views which were increasingly unwelcome in the Caroline Church. He proved willing to downplay his differences with the Laudians, and his service in three northern dioceses allowed his skills as an anti-Catholic polemicist to be deployed in areas where they would have maximum impact.

Early career to 1621

Morton’s earliest biographer claimed he was related to the Dorset family which produced Cardinal John Morton^†, archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VII, and Sir Albertus Morton^*, secretary of state to Charles I, but omitted to provide any details of his pedigree. His father was a York mercer and a member of the city’s Twenty-Four, the committee of former sheriffs who attended corporation meetings but had no vote.36 Barwick, 61-2; D. Palliser, Tudor York, 66-7, 98-9; York Civic Recs. ed. D. Sutton (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. cxxxviii), ix. 6-9; Reg. of Freemen of the City of York ed. F. Collins (Surtees Soc. xcvi), 276. After receiving his schooling at York and Halifax, Morton went up to St John’s College, Cambridge, where his theological views were clearly shaped by the master, William Whitaker, one of the most influential Calvinist divines of the Elizabethan period. In 1592 Morton’s father secured him a benefice at Long Marston, west of York, which he presumably held as a sinecure, as he was elected to a college fellowship in the same year. Appointed university lecturer in logic shortly thereafter, he was also ordained by a former Johnian, Richard Howland^†, bishop of Peterborough.37 Barwick, 64-7; P. Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 235-7.

During his time at St John’s, Henry Hastings^†, 3rd earl of Huntingdon appointed Morton as one of his chaplains, apparently with the intention of using his polemical skills against northern Catholics. The earl’s death scotched this plan, but Morton was one of the preachers who conducted a series of disputations with Catholic prisoners at York Castle in 1599-1600, at the behest of the lord president, Thomas Cecil^*, 2nd Lord Burghley (later 1st earl of Exeter).38 Barwick, 67-8; Biddulph and Naylor, 8-9. We owe the point about the York Castle conferences to Michael Questier. In the summer of 1602 he went on an embassy to Bremen as chaplain to Ralph Eure^*, 3rd Lord Eure. Granted leave to travel at the end of the negotiations, Morton visited Mainz and Cologne, where he disputed with Jesuit academics, and Frankfurt-am-Main, where he bought a large number of Catholic books, many of which he later donated to the library at St John’s. On his return home shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth, he became chaplain to Roger Manners^*, 5th earl of Rutland, then newly restored to favour at the Jacobean Court.39 Barwick, 68-70; Biddulph and Naylor, 11-15; St John’s Coll. Camb., U.3, ff. 36v, 45-7, 62-7v.

Morton’s chaplaincy brought him to London, and afforded him time to write. His first publication, An Exact Discoverie of Romish Doctrine (1605), cited Catholic works extensively, and forensically examined the conclusions of his adversaries rather than ridiculing them. His next tract in English was A Full Satisfaction Concerning a Double Romish Iniquitie (1606), an answer to a Catholic polemic, which was published shortly after the Gunpowder Plot and dedicated to King James. At the same time he published two much larger Latin works, the Apologiae Catholicae (1605, 1606) dedicated to Richard Bancroft^*, archbishop of Canterbury. These volumes, intended as a refutation of a tract by ‘John Brereley, priest’ (the Lancashire Catholic James Anderton), were designed for a European scholarly audience. As Morton doubtless hoped, his writings brought him preferment: a royal chaplaincy in 1606; the deaneries of Gloucester (1607) and Winchester (1609); and a fellowship at Chelsea College, which was founded in 1610 as a centre for anti-Catholic polemic. Moreover, in 1610 Bancroft’s servant Sir Christopher Parkins^‡ nominated him to a prebend at York.40 Barwick, 70-1; Fasti, iii. 84; iv. 43; viii. 45; Oxford DNB, ii. 86. For examples of Morton’s international impact, see HMC Cowper, i. 68; HMC Downshire, ii. 295.

In 1608 Morton’s work A Preamble Unto an Incounter with PR refuted a publication by the Jesuit Robert Persons. The following year he presented the king with a copy of his next tract, A Catholike Appeale for Protestants. A riposte to the second edition of Anderton’s work, this text was later said to have been drafted in association with John Overall^* (later bishop of Norwich) and John Howson^* (later bishop of Durham), churchmen with very different priorities from his own. Clearly, disagreements over Calvinist soteriology did not preclude the three from co-operating over a scholarly defence of the Protestant faith.41 A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 233, 248-9; A. Hunt, ‘Lord’s Supper in Early Modern Eng.’, P. and P. clxi. 69; A. Milton, ‘“Anglicanism” by Stealth: the Career and Influence of John Overall’, Religious Pols. in Post-Reformation Eng. ed. K. Fincham and P. Lake, 169-70.

In 1610 and 1614 Morton preached before Convocation, and in 1610 he was apparently offered and declined the post of prolocutor (speaker) of its lower House. He became a regular preacher on the Lent roster at court where, in 1612-13, he met the Calvinist divines who came to England with the Elector Palatine. Frustrated in a bid for the mastership of his old college in 1612 by the machinations of John Williams^* (later archbishop of York), three years later he unhelpfully briefed the new master, Owen Gwyn, that ‘the king delighteth in brevity’ in a sermon, in anticipation of a royal visit to the university.42 Barwick, 73; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 521; J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), i. 22-3; P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Ct. (suppl. cal. 153, 185, 193, 205); The Eagle, xvi. 236; Biddulph and Naylor, 46-7.

In 1616 Morton was appointed bishop of Chester. He was not among the early contenders for this position, and was apparently moved in order to vacate the lucrative deanery of Winchester for John Young, younger son of the royal librarian. His consecration at Lambeth on 7 July was attended by George Gordon, 1st marquess of Huntly [S], a Scottish Catholic who was on this occasion publicly absolved from the excommunication pronounced against him by the Scottish Kirk – a provocative assertion of the king’s claim that the two national churches espoused the same Reformed faith. The see of Chester, worth around £650 a year, was usually held in commendam with a lucrative rectory, but the most obvious vacancy, at Wigan, Lancashire was granted to John Bridgeman^* (his successor as bishop of Chester). Morton was allowed to retain his York prebend and granted the rectory of Stockport, Cheshire, but the revenues of his see were much attenuated.43 NLW, Clenennau 314; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 2, 19-20; HMC Downshire, iv. 547-8; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 379; Barwick, 74-7; Oxford DNB, xxxix. 435. Morton’s arrival at Chester was delayed by ill health, and in 1617 he was embarrassed when, after preaching a sermon before the king at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire, James received a petition from the local godly ministers, calling for stricter enforcement of the Sabbath. James, who retorted with a speech endorsing ‘honest recreation’ after divine service, may have suspected Morton of indulging the Lancashire puritans. Morton later speculated that this episode cost him a promotion, as Richard Neile^*, bishop of Lincoln, was translated to the wealthy see of Durham only weeks later.44 Barwick, 79-83; P. Collinson, Religion of Protestants, 89-90; Fasti, ix. 2; Biddulph and Naylor, 60-2; HP Commons 1604-29, iv. 803.

To restore his credit, Morton penned a fresh tract, A Defence of the Innocencie of the three Ceremonies of the Church of England (1618), a decidedly belated response to a 1605 petition from the Lincolnshire puritans arguing against the use of the surplice, the cross in baptism and kneeling at communion.45 Biddulph and Naylor, 57-60; Fincham, 259-60. The tract Morton responded to was An Abridgement of that Booke which the Ministers of Lincoln Diocese Delivered to his Majestie (1605). He may have written it upon the advice of its dedicatee, the new royal favourite George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham. This tract had a salutary effect on Morton’s career. In August 1618 he was said to be a contender for Chichester, and though Samuel Harsnett^* (later archbishop of York) remained in post, Morton was translated to Coventry and Lichfield instead, apparently on the recommendation of Lancelot Andrewes^*, bishop of Ely (later bishop of Winchester).46 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 163; T. Morton, Episkopos Apostolikos, or the Episcopacy of the Church of Eng. (1670), preface, p. iii. His tract also provoked a riposte from the separatist William Ames, then an exile in the Low Countries, which reinforced the impression that Morton was as keen to deal with the problem of Protestant nonconformity as Catholic.47 W. Ames, A Reply to Dr. Mortons Generall Defence (1622). Shortly after arriving at Lichfield, Morton scored a propaganda coup against the Staffordshire Catholics, exposing the fraudulent practices of a teenage boy apparently possessed by demons, who, it emerged, had been coached by priests.48 R. Baddeley, The Boy of Bilson (1622); Biddulph and Naylor, 72-5.

Parliament and diocese, 1621-24

Morton sat in his first Parliament in 1621. Consistently assiduous in his attendance, he generally played an active role in the Lords. Despite being a novice, he was appointed to the newly instituted committee for privileges on 5 Feb., a task he seems to have taken seriously, as he attended a meeting of the committee on 13 Apr., during the Easter recess. Presumably because of his polemical interests, he was named to attend conferences with the Commons about enforcement of the recusancy laws, and he later called for ‘a stricter course against the obstinate recusants which will refuse to hear admonition or instruction’, along the lines he himself followed in his own diocese. The unfortunate confrontation over Sabbath observance at Hoghton Tower in 1617 may explain his nomination to committees for two separate drafts of the Sabbath bill.49 LJ, iii. 10b, 17a, 18b, 39b, 130b; HMC Hastings, iv. 289-90; LD 1621, p. 40. Named to attend a conference with the Commons about the recapture of the fugitive monopolist Sir Giles Mompesson^‡, Morton was later appointed to committees investigating corruption charges against another suspect under investigation, the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon^*, Viscount St Alban.50 LJ, iii. 34a, 74b, 80a, 101a. He was the sponsor of a bill to annex the revenues of a Lichfield Cathedral prebend to the town church of St Mary, which received two readings in the Commons, but went no further.51 CJ, i. 605b, 631a; HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 366.

Morton made his first recorded speech in the Lords on 27 Apr., criticizing the silk-dyeing patentee Matthias Fowles, whom, he insisted, had clearly benefited from defective industrial techniques. The case of Sir Henry Yelverton^‡, who compared King James to Edward II, was far more serious: the king insisted on examining Yelverton to defend his own honour, which threatened to undermine the Lords’ own recently revived claim to parliamentary judicature. In the course of debating James’s demand to see the notes of Yelverton’s interrogation, Morton, perhaps hoping to defuse the situation, suggested that the House send the notes the clerk had taken at the time, without any further elucidation. Yelverton was eventually handed back to the Lords for judgement, but while Prince Charles (Stuart^*) pressed for a summary judgement on 8 May, others, among them Lord Spencer, wanted to allow Yelverton a chance to defend himself. Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel dismissively referred to Spencer’s humble ancestry, which caused an uproar; feelings were still running high four days later when Morton, despite agreeing that ‘the words are scandalous’, followed Spencer in demanding that Yelverton be allowed the right of reply. By 17 May, when the House re-examined Arundel’s insult, Morton was prepared to drop the matter: ‘to be called shepherd no disgrace; moved a reconciliation’. The king apparently took exception to Morton’s unsuccessful attempt to broker a settlement of this dispute, but Buckingham later vouched for his good intentions.52 LD 1621, pp. 34, 59, 77, 91; Bodl., Add.d.111, f. 114; R. Zaller, Parl. of 1621, pp. 119-23. With this in mind, Morton was even less inclined to make an issue of the concurrent dispute over the Commons’ claim to try the Catholic barrister Edward Floyd for insulting Princess Elizabeth: on 7 May he called to refer the question of how to reverse the Commons’ judgement to a subcommittee.53 LD 1621, p. 71; C. Russell, PEP, 117-18. Morton was generally inclined to pacify quarrels, as was illustrated on 11-12 Dec., in the case of Sir John Bourchier’s^‡ complaint against the new lord keeper, John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, which he clearly regarded as frivolous. First, he saw Williams privately, and urged him to accommodate the dispute; and then he called for the House to waive their resolution to imprison Bourchier.54 LD 1621, pp. 114, 119.

In the aftermath of the angry dissolution of the Parliament, a benevolence was raised for the assistance of the Protestant forces in the Palatinate, then under attack by the army of Flanders. Morton raised £560 from the clergy of his diocese, slightly more than the clerical subsidy collected in 1621, a better yield than that in many other dioceses.55 SP14/133/13. Morton’s anti-Catholic writings gave him an interest in Marc’Antonio de Dominis, the former Catholic archbishop of Spalato, who had converted and conformed to the Church of England, but ultimately recanted and returned to Rome, where he died in prison. His earliest biographer claimed Morton was among those who tried to dissuade de Dominis from travelling to Rome, asking him bluntly, ‘is it your purpose to convert the pope, yea, and the papal conclave, too?’56 Barwick, 85-7; Biddulph and Naylor, 65-72. Meanwhile, with the Spanish Match leading to a relaxation of the recusancy laws, Catholicism flourished in Morton’s own diocese: in Staffordshire William Bishop, the Catholic bishop of Chalcedon, appeared publicly in full regalia, conducting baptisms and confirmations.57 CJ, i. 674a; Stuart Dynastic Policy ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxxiv), 135-6. Morton responded in two ways: he printed and distributed thousands of catechisms; and he supported attempts to have children of at least four Catholic families within his diocese raised as Protestants, a policy no other bishop is known to have followed. He sustained both of these initiatives for the rest of his career: on 20 June 1628 he was named to the committee for a bill to prevent Catholic children being sent overseas for their education; while his 1637 visitation articles for Durham diocese inquired about both catechisms and Catholic wards.58 L.A. Underwood, ‘Childhood, Youth and Catholicism in Eng. c.1558-1660’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2011), 70-6, 83-6; Lords Procs. 1628, p. 678; Fincham, 257; Add. 4274, f. 148; Vis. Articles and Injunctions ed. K. Fincham (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. i), 116-17.

In 1623 Morton managed to offend King James by confiscating a pedigree horse from the estate of Gilbert Gerard^*, 2nd Lord Gerard, claiming it was due to him as an heriot; he was clearly unaware that Gerard had bequeathed the animal to Prince Charles in his will. After a terse exchange of correspondence, he retrieved the situation by presenting the horse to Charles as a gift when the latter returned from Spain in October.59 CSP Dom, 1619-23, pp. 586, 589, 601, 614; 1623-5, pp. 85, 95.

The Parliament which met in February 1624 was dominated by the question of the Spanish Match and the restoration of the Palatinate. Morton’s anti-Catholic views made him an obvious ally of Prince Charles and the war party. The session began with an account by Charles and Buckingham (now a duke) of the breakdown of Anglo-Spanish relations, and, when this was debated on 27 Feb., Morton suggested that the Lords should enumerate ‘all the disappointments which the king hath received in these treaties’. However, where Buckingham and Charles blamed Spanish perfidy, Morton saw the pope as ‘the first mover’. He found it ‘impossible to think that the bishop of Rome will yield to any good’, because the pope ‘believes no certainty in treaties’, and concluded that England’s only recourse was to ‘raise arms’. His belligerence meant that during March, he was named to attend several of the conferences at which the Lords slowly persuaded the Commons to vote funds for a war.60 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 7, 11; LJ, iii. 242b, 256a, 258b, 273b, 275a.

After Easter, Parliament reassembled to persuade James to make good the breach with Spain. The best indicator of progress was to ensure that the recusancy laws were enforced, the one English policy Spain aspired to frustrate, and Morton was involved in the drafting of a petition which he and others presented to James on 14 April.61 LJ, iii. 287b, 289a, 304a. The other important business in the latter half of the session was the impeachment of the lord treasurer, Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex, the leading opponent of a war with Spain. Morton was named to the committee responsible for taking depositions, and to another for drafting the heads of the charges against the accused. He was also a member of one of the three subcommittees which handled the examinations of witnesses, between 17 Apr. and 10 May. When the treasurer came to be sentenced, Morton moved to examine the pardon he had been granted before the session to see whether it covered criminal actions. Furthermore, when the Lords discussed whether Cranfield should be barred from public office in perpetuity, he recalled that ‘Nebuchadnezzar fell and [was] restored; his son continued in his father’s sins, and [was] punished, for he took no warning’. He formed part of the delegation which delivered the Lords’ sentence to James on 14 May.62 Ibid. 286a, 301b, 311a, 317b, 320b, 329a, 346a-9b, 353a-8a, 365a, 384b; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 77, 88.

Outside the realm of court politics and diplomacy, Morton played only a modest part in the 1624 Parliament. At the start of the session, he and Bishop Lewis Bayly^* of Bangor were given the proxy of Miles Smith^*, bishop of Gloucester, while after Easter, he was assigned the proxies of Bishop Bridgeman of Chester and Theophilus Field^*, bishop of Llandaff. On 26 Feb. and 1 Mar. he excused the absence of Bishop Andrewes and Lord Spencer at roll-calls.63 Add. 40087, f. 3; Add. 40088, f.10; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, ff. 14, 21. When Samuel Harsnett (by now bishop of Norwich), who had been under investigation for much of the session, rounded on one of his accusers on 19 May, Morton spoke ‘in commendation of Norwich’.64 LD 1624 and 1626, p. 96. He may have had an interest in some of the local legislation before the House: Prince Charles’s bill for the purchase of Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire, to which committee he was named on 10 Mar., concerned property within his diocese; the Welsh cottons bill was sponsored by the Shrewsbury drapers; while the Hallamshire cutlers’ bill concerned the manor of Sheffield, Yorkshire, which lay just outside his bishopric.65 LJ, iii. 254b, 303b, 393a. Morton was presumably the sponsor of a bill confirming a perpetual rent settled on the bishopric of Lichfield under a statute of 1581, which passed both Houses without incident.66 Ibid. 362b, 391b, 397b, 399a; Kyle thesis, 482.

Parliament and theological controversy 1625-6

During the elections for the 1625 Parliament, Morton supported the comptroller of the household, Sir John Suckling^‡, in his unsuccessful bid for a seat at Coventry, Warwickshire.67 Coventry Archives, BA H/C/17/1, f. 276v; HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 423. At the start of the session, the House agreed that all new Members should take the oath of allegiance ‘as they are lords of Parliament’. This formula had been laid down in the Lords’ standing orders of 1621, in order to evade a decision as to whether the bishops were the social equals of the lay nobility. However, Morton, who had been a member of the 1621 privileges’ committee, recalled ‘that they were certified from the Tower that the bishops were peers of Parliament’. This phrasing, while occasionally cited thereafter, did not pass into general usage. Two days later, Morton was again named to the privileges’ committee, and on 10 Aug. he moved to reinforce its numbers to compensate for absentees.68 Procs. 1625, pp. 41, 45, 59, 174-5. He was also involved in the drafting of the recusancy petition and related legislation.69 Ibid. 84, 89, 146, 174. On 30 June he delivered a message from George Abbot^*, archbishop of Canterbury, who had been asked by the Commons what had been done about Richard Montagu’s^* A New Gagg for an Old Goose, an Arminian theological work referred to the archbishop by the 1624 Parliament. Montagu, who had since justified his position in another work, Appello Caesarem, for which he claimed the backing of the late King James, had privately expected to be censored by Morton, or another unsympathetic Calvinist author, but had instead been referred to the Arminian Francis White^*, dean of Carlisle.70 Procs. 1625, pp. 72, 268; Cosin Corresp. ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Soc. lii), 34-5; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 150-3, 165.

The 1625 Parliament was dissolved before this theological controversy was settled, but, aware that a reckoning would come, Montagu busied himself among the works of Morton, Joseph Hall^* (later bishop of Exeter), Lancelot Andrewes and James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, finding quotations which reflected his own views. After two months of effort, he considered that he had written ‘scarce a particular but avouched by Bishop Morton, though perhaps against his will and intention’. Meanwhile, five Calvinist authors were writing tracts in refutation of Montagu’s works. This issue had the potential to disrupt the 1626 Parliament, so over two days at the start of the session, Buckingham convened a conference between two Calvinist divines on the one hand (Morton and his own chaplain, John Preston) and four of their critics on the other (Dean White, John Cosin, John Buckeridge^*, bishop of Rochester, and, on the second day, Montagu himself). This meeting was held at the duke’s London residence, York House, before a group of peers, who also occasionally intervened.71 Cosin Corresp. 80, 85-6; Tyacke, 155-7, 164-7; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 182. The meeting had no official status, and no formal record was kept, although John Cosin circulated an account of the first day’s proceedings, and Preston, who arrived very late on the first day, kept an account of his own role in the debates.72 J. Cosin, Works, ii. 19-64; T. Ball, Life of … Dr. Preston ed. E.W. Harcourt, 124-34. Between these partisan accounts, it is difficult to gauge Morton’s performance. On the first day, he attempted to prove that Montagu held opinions contrary to the Thirty-Nine Articles, with little success. At the end of the day, he called for a ban on the sale of Montagu’s books, only to be rebuffed by Buckingham, who insisted that the objections Morton had raised ‘as yet were not so weighty as to persuade any such matter’. On the second day, with Montagu present, Morton rehearsed his earlier remarks, but it was Preston who argued the main point about predestination.73 Tyacke, 172-80; Cosin, Works, ii. 64, 73-4; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 183-4.

While the York House Conference ended inconclusively, it did little to resolve the disputes within the Church; Morton privately told Christopher Sherland^‡ that ‘he [Morton] would sooner die than hold some of his [Montagu’s] opinions’.74 Procs. 1626, ii. 206-7. Religious questions received little attention in Parliament, which was dominated by Buckingham’s impeachment. Morton avoided expressing any opinion on this explosive issue, but he did protest after Arundel, one of the duke’s chief opponents, was arrested on 6 March. When this issue was eventually raised in the Lords over a week later, Morton seconded Bishop Harsnett’s call to petition the king for the earl’s release. The motion was laid aside, but the issue of Arundel’s detention was raised again on 5 Apr., when Morton supported calls to resume the search for precedents, and insisted that there were ‘pregnant proofs for the privileges’. He was named to a committee drafting a petition calling for Arundel’s release on 9 May, but was absent from the House when the earl finally took his seat a month later.75 Ibid. i. 158, 260-2, 389. Another peer barred from attending the Lords was John Digby^*, 1st earl of Bristol, who petitioned to take his seat pending the filing of charges against him. Morton called to stand upon the orders of the House, by which he probably meant the earl should sit until formally charged.76 Russell, 302-3; Procs. 1626, i. 323. Morton was absent for much of the last month of the session; his last recorded speech was delivered on 15 May, when he was one of the many peers who entered a protestation that Sir Dudley Digges^‡, in presenting impeachment charges against Buckingham, had said nothing which impugned the king’s honour.77 Russell, 304-7; Procs. 1626, i. 477. He revived the Lichfield prebend bill which had been lost in 1621; but it progressed little further on this occasion, receiving two readings in the Commons, but failing after the report stage, on 28 February.78 Procs. 1626, ii. 32, 69, 151, 214; HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 366. For his continuing interest in St Mary’s, see CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 248.

Parliament and polemic, 1628-32

Following the dissolution of the 1626 assembly, Parliament did not meet again until March 1628. The key issue on this occasion was the liberties of the subject. For much of the session, Morton clearly hoped for a compromise: on 15 Apr., when the judges explained that their ruling in the Five Knights’ case had not constituted a binding precedent for arrest without cause shown, he ventured the unoriginal thought that ‘this relation between the king and his subjects is such as between the head and the members’.79 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 235-6. On 12 May, after King Charles refused to accept the Petition of Right without some provision to uphold his prerogative to imprison without cause shown, Morton was one of many who pressed for an accommodation, moving for a committee to find a form of words to satisfy king and Commons. When a proviso for the prerogative was reported to the Lords on 17 May, Morton urged that if MPs rejected it, they should be invited to draw up their own form of words, and on 21 May he produced his own draft of a ‘saving clause’ for the prerogative, and invited others to tender theirs.80 Ibid. 430, 456, 490, 492-3, 495-6; Russell, 361-2, 370-3. Brushing the Lords’ objections aside, MPs had the Petition submitted unamended, but Charles’s first answer was considered inadequate, and caused uproar in the Commons. On 7 June, having allowed several days for tempers to cool, Harsnett, Williams and Morton moved to ask the king to explain himself, which allowed Charles to make a response acceptable to the Commons.81 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 600-1; Russell, 377-83.

Amid the drama of the constitutional debates, Morton found time for other business in 1628. At the second reading of the bill for better maintenance of the ministry on 28 Mar., he observed that if no-one spoke, the measure could not be committed; so he praised it as ‘a blessed bill if the hearts of the people be accordingly inclined’. Appointed to the privileges’ committee once again, he was one of those named to peruse the Journal each week, a task he continued to perform during the 1629 session.82 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 73, 79, 116-17, 461, 583; LJ, iv. 6b. A bill for ‘Coventry and Lichfield’ received a single reading in the Lords on 30 May 1628, possibly the Lichfield prebend measure of 1626.83 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 565.

Morton arrived a week late for the 1629 session, just in time to join a delegation petitioning the king for a national fast day on 27 January. He was appointed to a committee to draft a petition complaining about the precedence on local commissions allowed to English gentry who had bought Scots and Irish peerages, another to look to the national defences, and a third to consider a scheme to create a gentry academy in London, which was promoted by the earl of Arundel.84 LJ, iv. 14a, 25b, 27b, 37b, 39b.

Morton’s later writings were inclined to understate the theological differences between his Calvinism and the newly ascendant faction led by Bishop Neile and William Laud^* (eventually archbishop of Canterbury). The preface to Morton’s Grand Imposture of the (now) Church of Rome (1626, 1628), dedicated to the king, emphasized the ‘regal supremacy over ecclesiastics’, and called for a General Council to supersede the decrees of the Council of Trent.85 Sigs. A5v, A7. His Of the Institution of the Sacrament (1631) roundly denounced the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but the real target of this critique was undoubtedly the Laudians, some of whom expressed similar views about the eucharist. By the time the second edition of this work appeared in 1635, he had to explain that remarks about communion tables did not impugn the altar policy then being implemented.86 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 196-8; Tyacke, 212-13. The Laudians who came to dominate the Caroline Church under Charles I clearly believed they could work with Morton’s style of moderate Calvinism. Indeed, it is unlikely he would have been invited to the York House Conference if this had been otherwise. Thus in April 1626 King Charles ordered Morton to join Harsnett and William Laud, then bishop of St Davids, in investigating a sermon by Godfrey Goodman^*, bishop of Gloucester, who was said to have preached transubstantiation.87 Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 186-7. Nor did theological differences get in the way of Morton’s personal ties with at least one Arminian, Valentine Carey^*, bishop of Exeter, who had been his contemporary at St John’s in the 1590s.88 St John’s Coll. Camb. D94.178.

Bishop of Durham and later career 1632-59

Morton’s ability to work with the Arminians eventually paved the way for further preferment. In June 1631 he was rumoured to be in contention for the archbishopric of York. This post eventually went to Richard Neile; but when Bishop Howson of Durham died in the following year, Morton filled the vacancy.89 Fairfax Corresp. ed. G.W. Johnson, i. 233-5. In translating Morton, Charles may have calculated that, with Neile as his superior, and Cosin as a prebend at Durham, he would remain tractable – which largely proved to be the case. Morton hosted the king’s visit to Durham in June 1633, when, despite his distaste, Cosin decked the cathedral and re-sited the altar ‘after the Catholic manner’.90 Cosin Corresp. 215; Newsletters from the Caroline Court ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, xxvi), 192. On the other hand, Morton irritated the lord president, Thomas Wentworth^*, Viscount Wentworth (later 1st earl of Strafford), by insisting that recusants who compounded for their fines should still be required to confer with him and his chaplains, and have their children catechized in the established church. Wentworth fumed, ‘is it not altogether so seasonal to be pursued thus hotly in the very face of the commission, to hinder the compounders … yet did I never know puritan capable of this Christian wisdom’.91 Strafforde Letters ed. W. Knowler (1739), i. 156-7, 173-4, 285-6, 294; ii. 158-9, 170-1; Works of Abp. Laud, vii. 61-2; SP16/345/85.I. The palatine responsibilities which came with the bishopric included militia musters, coastal defence and purveyance of ship timber, tasks which stretched the capabilities of an elderly man such as Morton. The situation was eased at the start of the Bishops’ Wars, when his distant relative Sir Thomas Morton was sent to take charge of the northern militia.92 CSP Dom, 1635, pp. 113, 156, 269. 308, 338-9, 348-9, 370-1; 1635-6, pp. 274, 420-1.

Morton played an active role in the Long Parliament until December 1641, when he was placed under house arrest for petitioning against the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords.93 Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 342, 461. He apparently remained in London during the Civil War, although he had a pro-episcopalian tract published, anonymously, at Oxford in 1644. When the bishopric of Durham was sold off in 1649, he was granted an annuity of £800 per annum, although this does not seem to have been paid.94 Confessions and Proofes of Protestant Divines of Reformed Churches (1644); Barwick, 137; CCC, 1930-1. His final publication, Ezekiels Wheels, on the mutability of divine providence, appeared in 1653. By this time he was living with Sir Christopher Yelverton^‡ at Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire, where he died from complications arising from an operation on a hernia, on 22 Sept. 1659; he was buried in the parish church a week later. His will, citing the ‘small remainder of my estate which God is pleased to reserve unto me in these distracted times’, included only a handful of bequests; he made his chaplain, John Barwick, his executor, and bequeathed him that part of his library not already given to St. John’s college. The will included a lengthy profession of faith in support of episcopacy, which he presumably included to have it recorded for posterity; but by the time it was proved on 1 Oct. 1660, the bishops had already been restored.95 Barwick, 128; PROB 11/300, ff. 229-30v.