NEILE, Richard (1562-1640)

The foremost ecclesiastical politician of the early Stuart period, and a prominent critic of the ‘Calvinist consensus’ of the late Elizabethan Church, Richard Neile had both the intellectual vision and tactical skills to create and sustain a political movement which ultimately wrested control of the Church of England from the heirs of John Whitgift^*, and took it in a different, and highly controversial, direction. The members of Neile’s ‘Durham House group’ – named after his London residence between 1617 and 1628 – shared a sceptical approach to Calvinism, but while some were influenced by Arminian theology, others focussed on liturgy, vestments, music or the restoration of churches. Moreover, Durham House did not comprehend all anti-Calvinists: Lancelot Andrewes^*, bishop of Winchester, although a theological mentor for Neile and many others, remained aloof; as did the future archbishop of York Samuel Harsnett^*, who looked to Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel for patronage; and John Howson^*, Neile’s eventual successor as bishop of Durham. Neile’s success was founded on a close personal relationship with King James: his noli me tangere speech, which helped to wreck the Addled Parliament, was clearly prompted by the king; and without the royal approval which Neile secured, it is unlikely that the royal chaplain Richard Montagu^* (later bishop of Chichester) would have published his controversial theological works in 1624-5. Neile remained the leading light of the anti-Calvinist movement within the Church of England for several years after James’s death, but King Charles, being closer to William Laud^* (who was promised the archbishopric of Canterbury as early as 1626) ultimately chose the latter rather than Neile to implement his vision for the Church in the 1630s.

Early career 1562-1608

The second son of a Westminster tallow-chandler, Neile recalled in his will that he was born in the same year Convocation adopted the Thirty-Nine Articles, whereas in fact he was baptized a year earlier. An oppidan [town boy] at Westminster school, he was a contemporary of Peter Smart, who would later become the chief critic of his circle at Durham Cathedral and who circulated tales about his being a dunce at school. These stories may have been exaggerated, but Neile himself later recalled that Edward Grant, his headmaster, advised his widowed mother to apprentice him to a bookseller in Paul’s churchyard, which suggests a lack of faith in his academic prospects. On the other hand, Gabriel Goodman, dean of Westminster, recommended him to St John’s College, Cambridge as ‘of good hope to be learned’, and he was admitted on a scholarship in April 1580. His cause at both Westminster and St John’s may have been assisted by acquaintance with Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury), a year his junior and his contemporary at school and university.37 Memorials of St Margaret’s, Westminster, 20; Foster thesis, 1-4; P. Smart, Short Treatise of Altars (1629), preface. Neile later recalled that Cecil’s mother, Lady Mildred, had been ‘his maker’; which suggests that she commended his services to her husband, William Cecil^*, 1st Lord Burghley, before her death in April 1589. Early accounts of his life suggest he was a tutor in the Cecil household, and he was probably appointed one of Burghley’s chaplains shortly after his ordination at in the bishop’s chapel at Peterborough in July 1589. In the following year he was installed as vicar of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, the parish in which Burghley’s mansion of Theobalds was situated.38Foster thesis, 6-7; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 17.

During the 1580s, St John’s had enjoyed a reputation as a godly seminary, but the puritan fellows who dominated the college became involved in the presbyterian movement, a development Neile clearly hoped to reverse. In 1595, during the search for a new master following the death of William Whitaker, he endorsed the candidacy of Richard Clayton as a means to prevent the election of Whitaker’s radical lieutenant Henry Alvey.39 Foster thesis, 4, 8; R. Rex, ‘The Sixteenth Century’, St John’s Coll. Camb.: a Hist. ed. P. Linehan, 84-9; St John’s Coll. Camb. D105.1. Neile left St John’s in around 1590, before this controversy erupted, but remained close to his alma mater, being appointed lecturer for the annual sermons in honour of Lady Mildred Cecil in 1593, and recommending protégés to the college throughout his life.40 Foster thesis, 8.

In 1595 Laurence Chaderton, master of Emmanuel, and two other puritan college heads recommended Neile to Burghley for the mastership of Magdalene College, vacated by Clayton’s transfer to St John’s, a post which ultimately went to a more senior Johnian, the venal John Palmer. With the university then in the throes of theological controversy, the heads may have wished to demonstrate their conformity by nominating a candidate they are unlikely to have regarded as a natural ally, although Neile – like many others who took a sceptical attitude to Calvinist doctrines – was consistently guarded about his theological opinions. Reflecting on this issue much later, Neile recalled that during the controversy over the proto-Arminian views of Peter Baro (which led to the formulation of the Lambeth Articles of 1595), he sent Burghley a summary of orthodox positions on the doctrine of salvation, while at the same time insisting he had ‘ever carefully avoided reading into these questions’. The one exception to this rule was at his doctoral examination in 1600, when it was presumably with careful forethought that he rehearsed orthodox Calvinist arguments on auricular confession and salvation – unlike one of his examiners, John Overall^* (later bishop of Norwich), whose heterodox opinions were silenced by the moderator of the dispute. Neile was still regarded as a credible candidate for a college headship in 1601, when Cambridge’s vice chancellor, John Jegon^*, recommended him to Sir Robert Cecil, now the queen’s chief minister, whose service Neile himself had entered on Burghley’s death three years earlier, for the vacancy at Clare Hall, a college Neile might have found more congenial. However, by this time Neile had apparently turned his back on an academic career, offering Lancelot Andrewes, newly appointed dean of Westminster, an exchange of his recently acquired sinecure at Toddington, Bedfordshire, for Andrewes’ rich living of St Giles Cripplegate. Nothing came of this offer, but Neile did not seek an active role at Cambridge thereafter, for although he transacted business for Cecil, the university’s chancellor from 1601, he declined another college headship, at Corpus Christi, in 1603.41 Ibid. 9-15; N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 110-12; HMC Hatfield, xi. 241; Durham Cathedral Lib., Hunter 67/14, pp. 12-13.

Neile received his first preferment in London in 1602, when Cecil secured him a sinecure as master of the Savoy Hospital in the Strand. This office was habitually held in tandem with the office of clerk of the closet, whose incumbent was responsible for the Chapel Royal, and accordingly Neile was appointed in July 1603, when he also acquired a royal chaplaincy. However, it was a surprising development, as Neile had only preached at court for the first time on 30 Mar. 1603, the Sunday after Queen Elizabeth’s death. Nevertheless, the previous incumbent, John Thornborough^*, now bishop of Bristol, was judged too unreliable to handle the sensitive task of arranging the roster of weekly preachers before the king, and Neile therefore acquired this position of considerable influence within the Jacobean Church. His appointment was not directly due to Cecil’s influence: it was Richard Bancroft^*, bishop of London (later archbishop of Canterbury), who picked him before King James attempted to intrude any Scots; although Neile asked Cecil’s permission before accepting the post.42 Foster thesis, 15-18; HMC Hatfield, xv. 199; McCullough, 107, 110-11, (suppl. cal. 95-6).

As Cecil’s chaplain, Neile played a modest part in ensuring that Cambridge University conformed to the 1604 Canons. At the end of that year Laurence Chaderton assured Neile that the fellows and students at Emmanuel College had all subscribed to the Three Articles required by Canon 36. Although this was an implausible assurance, as Emmanuel was the university’s most puritan seminary, no further action was taken. One of the leading opponents of subscription outside the universities was the Northamptonshire squire Sir Edward Montagu^* (later 1st Lord Montagu), whose brother, James Montagu^*, dean of the Chapel Royal, was Neile’s colleague at court. The king clearly suspected some degree of collusion between the Montagu brothers, and Neile was apparently ordered to make discreet inquiries: in February 1606 he received a letter from the ecclesiastical lawyer John Lambe about puritan resistance to subscription in Northamptonshire. When a local gentleman, Lewis Pickering, subsequently claimed that Dean Montagu had been playing a double game, Cecil (now earl of Salisbury) and Neile investigated the matter behind Montagu’s back; they eventually exonerated the dean.43 Foster thesis, 20-1; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 381; xvii. 270-1, 288.

King James clearly regarded Neile as a trustworthy servant by October 1605, when he and Samuel Harsnett assisted their master in unmasking the imposture of Anne Gunter, an alleged victim of witchcraft.44 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 471-2; Foster thesis, 21; J.A. Sharpe, Bewitching of Anne Gunter, 189-98. That same month Neile succeeded Andrewes (who had been nominated as bishop of Chichester and royal almoner) as dean of Westminster; he was installed on 5 Nov. 1605. Neile was clearly married by this point, as the dean’s apartments had to be modified to accommodate the requirements of his spouse, a cousin of the wife of the lord chamberlain, Thomas Howard^*, 1st earl of Suffolk. Her connections probably help to explain Neile’s rapid preferment in the early years of James’s reign, when Suffolk was close to both the king and Cecil. However, Neile was careful never to become exclusively dependent on such a notorious crypto-Catholic. Neile’s wife also seems to have played an important role in establishing her husband’s household as a centre for anti-Calvinist clerics in Jacobean London.45 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 209; Fasti, vii. 70; Foster thesis, 22-4; Oxford DNB, xl. 358.

Valued at £232 p.a., Westminster deanery was ideally situated for Neile’s court responsibilities. An efficient administrator – assisted by his elder brother William, appointed registrar to the chapter in 1607 – he increased the revenues of the abbey by £96 a year. He spent over £1,000 on renovations, moving the communion table to the east end and richly decorating it; installed an organ in the Henry VII Chapel; and introduced sung anthems into the morning services, all of which demonstrates an appreciation of the ‘beauty of holiness’, which most Calvinists deplored. In addition, he significantly improved the students’ diets at Westminster School, and provided scholarships for oppidans such as himself, who were ineligible for election to the endowed scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge.46 Foster thesis, 25-34; Acts of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster ed. C.S. Knighton (Westminster Abbey Rec. Ser. ii), 221; K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars Restored, 83-4, 100; Foster, ‘Dean of Westminster’, Westminster Abbey Reformed, 1540-1640, pp.189-96. Meanwhile, Neile took his first steps as a patronage broker, unsuccessfully trying to influence the election of a master at Caius College, Cambridge, advising Dean Montagu (with greater success) about the various interests to be reconciled in order to effect a royal promise of the bishopric of Bath and Wells, and arranging for William Smith, master of Clare Hall, Cambridge, to preach before the king in order to retract some ill-judged remarks about corrupt courtiers.47 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 410; HMC Hatfield, xix. 204; xxi. 46; Foster thesis, 37-8; Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 110.

Rochester and Lichfield dioceses, 1608-13

Neile was nominated as bishop of Rochester in June 1608, a position vacated when William Barlow^* moved to Lincoln. This see, valued at £332 a year, was not particularly well rewarded, but it was small and close to London, and Neile was also allowed to hold his deanery and two positions at Chichester Cathedral in commendam, together with the rectory of Southfleet, Kent, habitually annexed to the bishopric; the package was probably worth around £600 p.a.48 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 443; Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15), vi. 56; Foster thesis, 45-7; Fasti, ii. 14. Rochester was often used as a stepping stone to further preferment, and Neile had every intention of moving on. In April 1609 he was tipped as a successor to William Overton^* at Coventry and Lichfield, but this bishopric went instead to George Abbot^*(later archbishop of Canterbury). In November 1609 Bancroft therefore offered Neile Chichester, Andrewes having moved to Ely. Although the see was worth £600 a year, Neile declined it, perhaps in the hope that he might land the much more lucrative diocese of London, vacated by the death of Thomas Ravis^* in December. However, this went to Abbot, and he had to settle for the resulting vacancy at Coventry and Lichfield. This bishopric was rated at £633 p.a., but there were problems with some of the revenues, which made it a poorer bargain than Chichester. The appointment was therefore delayed while Neile pleaded to be allowed to hold the deanery of Westminster in commendam.49 SP14/49/7; Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. vi. 56; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 197; Chamberlain Letters, 296; Foster thesis, 47-9.

The delicate circumstances of his impending promotion gave Neile (who attended a prorogation meeting of the Lords in February 1609)50 LJ, ii. 544a. every incentive to contribute to the parliamentary session which began on 9 Feb. 1610. While illness kept him away for several weeks after Easter, he still managed to attend three-quarters of the Lords’ sittings, and though he styled himself ‘the puisne of this House’ – an inaccurate description as both Abbot and Harsnett were actually his junior on the episcopal bench – he played a significant part in its proceedings.51 Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 101; LJ, ii. 580b, 584a, 585a. Puisne was legal terminology for a junior judge. At the start of the session, he was named to attend the conference at which Salisbury set out the crown’s financial position, and on 26 May he was one of the delegation who attended the king to deliver the Commons’ latest offer over the fiscal reform package known to posterity as the Great Contract. On 19 July, when Salisbury pressed for the financial details of the scheme to be worked out, Neile added his support:

Seeing the king doth part away with this gem [wardship] that no other kingdom hath, I think your lordships ought to settle a certain own [sic sum] unto him, and that his officers may not be troubled to trudge for it, which if it be not cared for, this hundred thousand pounds a year may be spent in gathering.

The ‘high prerogative’ tone of this speech was a conventional part of Neile’s rhetorical style, which was undoubtedly tailored to appeal to his royal master.52 LJ, ii. 550b, 603a; Procs. 1610, i. 154. Many MPs, however, disliked such language, raising complaints at the start of the session about the absolutist positions taken by the Interpreter, a textbook by John Cowell, Regius professor of civil law at Cambridge; Neile was one of those ordered to confer with the Commons about this dispute, which the king eventually intervened to settle.53 LJ, ii. 557b; S.B. Chrimes, ‘Constitutional Ideas of Dr John Cowell’, EHR, lxiv. 461-87.

Later that session, Sir Stephen Proctor was called into question for abusing a patent for collecting outstanding fines due to the crown. Parliament’s right to question a royal servant was a matter of dispute, and in a debate of 14 July, over whether Proctor could be examined under oath, Neile argued ‘because that we have so little time to sit, I think it best to leave him unto the Star Chamber’. Although his motion was ignored, the investigation ran out of time.54 Procs. 1610, i. 138; C.C.G. Tite, Impeachment and Parlty. Judicature, 64-74. A short while later, a bill to increase the penalties for regicide was tabled, in response to news of the assassination of Henri IV of France. By the time the Lords considered this measure, on 18 July, it was widely held to be too draconian. This did not prevent Neile from moving that the parents of those who plotted treason abroad might be prosecuted for treason themselves. In the event, the bill was lost for lack of time.55 Procs. 1610, i. 152.

In 1610, the bishops focussed much of their energies on frustrating the legislative initiatives of puritans in the Commons. The first bill to come before the Lords, requiring ministers with two or more livings to reside in one of their cures, received a splenetic broadside from Bancroft on 30 April. Four days later, Neile was one of those named to a subcommittee to consider a range of proposals for reform of pluralism and non-residence, which delayed its report until 23 June, when the bill was laid aside.56 LJ, ii. 587b; RICHARD BANCROFT. On 11 June, the bill intended to prevent puritan ministers from being deprived of their livings for refusing to subscribe to the 1604 Canons – the centrepiece of ecclesiastical authority – was granted a similarly frosty reception by Bancroft, who was seconded by Neile in the warmest terms:

… if your lordships do commit this bill, you bring his [the king’s] prerogative in question. If he that preferred this bill had known the power it hath, he would not have brought it in. If the acts done in Henry VIII his time be confirmed, then why should these, my master’s acts, be called into question … who is as wise and as learned a king as ever was in this Christian world.

Despite being opposed to the body of the bill, Neile was included on the committee appointed at the end of the debate. Eventually, after further clashes with the Commons, the Lords laid the bill aside.57 LJ, ii. 611a; Procs. 1610, i. 101-2; RICHARD BANCROFT.

On 23 June a bill to divide a Buckinghamshire parsonage into two livings received a more mixed reception from the bishops at the report stage. Neile considered ‘that these two livings, being so near, may well be held by one man and I cannot hold that these being severed, either of them are a competent living’. However, recalling his early career, he then insisted that the greatest benefit a young minister could have was not a good living, but a good patron. Abbot, though, believed the living would provide competent maintenance for two ministers, if divided, and although Bancroft backed Neile, the bill passed on a division.58 Procs. 1610, i. 111-12. Six days later, Bancroft and Neile again joined forces to oppose a bill which, the archbishop claimed, would prevent beneficed ministers from taking leases of lands, but leave puritan lecturers free to do so. Neile vehemently opposed this ‘squint-eyed bill’, arguing that it could only benefit ‘the schismatics and sectaries of the time’ while barring conformists from taking ‘so much as a house, when they come to the Parliament, or wait on the king’. The bill was denied a committal, but, despite the bishops’ protests, it was not formally dashed.59 Ibid. 121, 242-3; LJ, ii. 630a. Finally, on 12 July, several bishops joined forces to oppose the bill intended to allow the common law courts to take cognizance of the misdeeds of scandalous ministers. In one of the few dissenting speeches, Salisbury’s half-brother Thomas Cecil^*, 1st earl of Exeter, argued that the bill’s rejection would offend the Commons, prompting Neile to retort that ‘the power we have is from the king, and if a man doubt whether we [the Church] can punish these things, I pity his ignorance’. This elicited the tart response from Charles Howard^*, 1st earl of Nottingham, that bishops who committed offences would be tried by a jury of laymen, not their peers. Presumably because he had spoken against the bill, Neile was not named to the committee, but the measure was never reported.60 Procs. 1610, i. 136; LJ, ii. 641b.

Although his main focus during the session was on ecclesiastical legislation, Neile was also involved with some measures of local interest. He was named to committees for bills against receivers of stolen goods in London and the suburbs, to reverse a fraud practised upon Sir Henry Crispe of Kent, to confirm the endowments of the Brewers’ and Salters’ companies of London, and to erect a watercourse to fund the new London seminary, Chelsea College.61 LJ, ii. 583b, 586b, 591b, 645a; Procs. 1610, ii. 57. At the second reading of the bill to assign a strip of land by Durham House to Britain’s Bourse, the commercial enterprise Salisbury had set up next door, Neile made a request he admitted to be a ‘saucy point’: ‘seeing this is in Westminster, I humbly pray your lordships I may be suffered to attend the committees’; this was allowed, and the bill was passed.62 LJ, ii. 616a; Procs. 1610, i. 108. Finally, when the bill to confirm the foundation of Thomas Sutton’s projected hospital at Hallingbury, Essex was reported on 14 July, Neile backed Abbot, who asked for a recommittal after complaining that despite being bishop of London he had no right of visitation. He observed that the bill described Westminster as a cathedral rather than a collegiate church, which might of itself void the measure. Their efforts were frustrated by Bancroft, who observed that if such quibbles were heeded, Sutton might be dead before the bill passed.63 Procs. 1610, i. 139.

While Neile had undoubtedly cut a dash in the Lords, Bancroft’s declining health gave fresh urgency to the question of his promotion (it having previously been decided that he would be appointed to Coventry and Lichfield). Making the best of a bad deal, he surrendered Rochester to John Buckeridge^*, and the deanery of Westminster to George Montaigne^* (later archbishop of York), both of whom shared his sceptical approach to Calvinist doctrine. The treasurership at Chichester he passed over to his half-brother, Robert Newell, but he kept a residence within the precincts of Westminster Abbey, and was allowed to retain Southfleet rectory and a prebend at Chichester until he could find suitable replacements, up to the value of 200 marks. He quickly exchanged Southfleet for the rectory of Clifton Campville, Staffordshire, a sinecure traditionally held by the bishops of Lichfield, but he retained his Chichester prebend for over a decade. The deal was struck just in time: Bancroft died on 2 Nov., Neile received the royal assent for his election at Lichfield on 18 Nov., and he was translated on 6 December.64 Foster thesis, 44, 50-1; Chichester Dean and Chapter Act Bk. ed. W.D. Peckham (Suss. Rec. Soc. lviii), 217; CCEd; Fasti, vii. 29, 80; St John’s Coll. Camb. D105.338; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 643.

The parliamentary session which convened on 16 Oct. 1610 achieved little, and while Neile attended most of the Lords’ sittings, he left scant trace on its proceedings. One of four bishops who shared the proxy of Thomas Bilson^*, bishop of Winchester, he was named to attend a conference at which the Commons were pressed to indicate whether they intended to continue with the Great Contract. When it became apparent they did not, another conference was held to establish whether any other vote of supply was feasible. Other than this, Neile was included on committees for three bills: to preserve timber trees, to ensure that all wills were written down and to confirm duchy of Cornwall leases.65 LJ, ii. 669a, 671a, 675a, 677a, 678a; C. Russell, King Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 117-18.

Bancroft’s replacement by Abbot, and the death of Salisbury in May 1612, deprived Neile of his key patrons, but his situation remained favourable: he had established a working relationship with Abbot in the Lords in 1610; his wife had connections to the Howard faction, which remained in the ascendant at court; and his post as clerk of the closet kept him in the royal eye.66 Foster thesis, 52-3; N. Field, Short Memorials concerning … Dr Richard Field (1717), 14-15; St John’s Coll. Camb. D105.4, 337; Lincs. AO, DIOC/LT and D/1612 (18 Sept. [1612], Robert Rudd to Thomas Turner). However, he fell out with Abbot in the summer of 1613, when both men were appointed commissioners to investigate the possibility of annulling the marriage between Suffolk’s daughter Frances Howard and Robert Devereux^*, 3rd earl of Essex. The couple were estranged, and the countess wished to be free to marry the Scottish favourite, Robert Carr^*, earl of Somerset. After their initial deliberations, the commissioners were deadlocked: Andrewes and Neile (among others) supported an annulment, while Abbot and John King^*, bishop of London, were opposed. James thereupon appointed additional commissioners to secure an annulment, which was decreed in September 1613.67 Chamberlain Letters, i. 469; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 269; HMC Downshire, iv. 214; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xii), 238; A. Bellany, Pols. of Ct. Scandal in Early Modern Eng. 52-4.

Having worked behind the scenes to sway those who were against nullification, Neile was subsequently promised the bishopric of Lincoln, vacated by the sudden death of William Barlow^*. This see had originally been promised to the archbishop’s brother Robert Abbot^* but, by the end of November, Neile was confident enough of his translation to offer the Lichfield archdeaconry of Salop, one of the subordinate positions vacated in this round of transfers, to Owen Gwyn, the new master of St John’s, Cambridge. The deal seems to have been delayed by the archbishop’s determination to obtain some preferment for his brother, so it was not until 17 Dec. that Neile finally secured his congé d’élire for Lincoln. On the following day, presumably at the king’s suggestion, Neile visited Abbot at Lambeth Palace, urging him to issue a licence to allow Frances Howard’s marriage to Somerset to take place without the reading of banns. Abbot correctly perceived this as a ruse to get him to endorse the marriage publicly, and refused. The king thereupon punished his continued obstinacy by awarding Lichfield diocese to one of Neile’s friends, John Overall.68 Chamberlain Letters, i. 478; HMC Downshire, iv. 216; St John’s Coll. Camb. D94.497; Fasti, ix. 2; State Trials, ii. 839-44.

The Addled Parliament and its aftermath, 1614-15

The writs for a fresh Parliament were issued on 19 Feb. 1614, the day after Neile’s translation to Lincoln. Though present at almost every sitting, Neile left little trace on the session’s debates until its final two weeks. He was appointed to attend a conference with the Commons about the bill to ensure the succession rights of the Elector Palatine’s children. He was also named to committees on bills to require all wills to be written down, preserve timber (measures he had been asked to consider in 1610), restrict the use of gold and silver thread, confirm manorial customs in Winslow, Buckinghamshire (which lay within his new diocese), and confirm a dowry. At the second reading of the Sabbath bill, he moved that carriers and packmen should be included in the provisions of the bill, and that an earlier statute allowing four Sundays’ work on the harvest be rescinded; he was included on the committee.69 LJ, ii. 691a, 692b, 694a, 697b, 699b, 700b, 708b, 713b; HMC Hastings, iv. 266.

The paucity of significant business in the early part of the session was caused by disputes in the Commons, the most protracted of which concerned the crown’s claim to be entitled to levy impositions (increased customs tariffs) without parliamentary approval, on the basis of an Exchequer decree of 1606. This question had been extensively debated by the Commons in 1610, but the resulting grievance petition had been rejected by the king. The Commons provocatively insisted on rehearsing the same debates in May 1614, despite a royal warning that ‘to rob my crown of so regal a prerogative … is mere obstinacy’.70 Procs. 1614 (Commons), 142; Russell, King Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 82-5, 114-17. On 21 May, having concluded afresh that impositions were illegal, the Commons approached the Lords for a conference on this question. Before the lord chancellor, Thomas Egerton^*, Lord Ellesmere (later 1st Viscount Brackley), could even move for a committee of the whole House, Neile intervened:

I think it is a dangerous thing for us to confer with them about the point of impositions, for it is a noli me tangere [do not touch me], and none that have either taken the oath of supremacy or allegiance may do it with a good conscience … [for] in this conference we should not confer about a flower, but strike at the root of the imperial crown…

By contrast, Ellesmere and Abbot argued the Lords should hear what the Commons had to say, but not debate the issue. Two days later, it was decided to consult the judges before meeting the Commons, doubtless on the assumption that they would uphold the Exchequer verdict of 1606. Neile complied with this line, but still opposed a conference, suspecting that ‘if we should meet with the lower House there would pass from them undutiful and seditious speeches unfit for us to hear’; he was reproached by the next speaker, Robert Spencer, 1st Lord Spencer, for presuming ‘to condemn men before we hear them’, but no-one called him to order.71 HMC Hastings, iv. 249, 253; Russell, King Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 118-20.

The plan collapsed when Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke^‡, speaking for the judges, declined to offer a ruling about the legality of impositions. On 24 May, the debate about whether to confer with the Commons therefore resumed: the privy councillors and almost all the bishops were opposed, including Neile, who suggested ‘if any man be aggrieved about the point of impositions, let him bring his writ of error’ in the common law courts, an empty proposal as he almost certainly understood that the Exchequer court had rejected just such a suit in November 1606. Henry Wriothesley^*, 3rd and 1st earl of Southampton, deplored Neile’s 21 May speech, saying ‘I am sorry that lord had so little charity’, but the House decided against a conference on a division, in which all but one of the 17 bishops present voted against, by 39 votes to 30.72 HMC Hastings, iv. 256, 259-61; Chamberlain Letters, i. 533; LJ, ii. 706b-7a; Russell, King Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 120.

The Lords were in no hurry to relay this unwelcome message to the Commons, but on 25 May ‘a new coal kindled’ when Sir Henry Mervyn^‡ informed MPs of Neile’s provocative speech, quoting his words almost verbatim. Sir Walter Chute^‡, a royal carver, offered to discuss Neile’s words with the king, claiming that his master would be glad to have the bishop named, ‘who may peradventure discover more ill friends to this House’. By 26 May, when they were formally notified of the Lords’ refusal to meet them, the Commons had resolved to make a protest about Neile’s speeches, which was tendered by Sir Edward Hoby^‡ two days later.73 Procs. 1614 (Commons), 339, 342, 348, 362; LJ, ii.709b; Chamberlain Letters, i.533-4; Russell, King Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 121. The Lords’ debate which followed was dominated by bishops and councillors, who were reluctant to call Neile to account. Ellesmere observed that if Neile had intentionally insulted the Commons, the peers should have called him to order at the time. Consequently, when the Commons sent a fresh message to the Lords on 31 May, they were assured that Neile ‘did make solemn protestation, upon his salvation, that he did not speak anything with evil intention to that House’. As this did not satisfy the Commons, Abbot and Southampton pressed Neile to make an apology to the Lords. The bishop thereupon tearfully pleaded his humble origins and dependence on royal favour, and pronounced himself ‘very ready and willing to give satisfaction either to your lordships or the lower House for that I have said, referring myself to your lordships’ wisdoms and censures’. Suffolk then urged that the Commons should not make Neile ‘a bashaw’ [a pasha, or despot], and even the bishop’s enemies in the Lords acknowledged the sincerity of his apology. The Commons were informed that Neile had not ‘meant to cast any aspersion of sedition’ on them, and warned against accusing a peer hereafter on ‘common fame’ alone.74 HMC Hastings, iv. 267-77; LJ, ii. 710b-11a, 712b-13a. Many MPs were outraged: Sir Roger Owen^‡ noted the evasive phrasing of this message: ‘the words are not denied, only his [Neile’s] intention excused’; while Sir James Perrott^‡ invited further investigation, claiming that Neile had granted a false certificate of conformity to a recusant, Francis Lovett of Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, to free him from Exchequer fines. Some aimed to see Neile’s ‘whole life and carriage laid open and anatomized’, but the only substantive decision reached was to summon Lovett for questioning; the session ended in disarray before he appeared.75 Procs. 1614 (Commons), 402-4, 407-11; Chamberlain Letters, i. 536. Lovett had taken the oath of allegiance before Neile on 2 Feb. 1614: Borthwick, Sub.Bk.2, f. 158a.

What was Neile’s role in bringing about the collapse of the Addled Parliament? Secretary of State Sir Ralph Winwood^‡ correctly considered the bishop’s ‘impertinent speech’ to be only one factor among many, including the determination of the Commons to discuss impositions, the king’s unhelpful messages to the Commons, and the baleful influence of some courtiers. The more intriguing question, perhaps, is whether Neile acted alone or at the behest of others. During the Commons debate of 31 May, one unnamed speaker claimed that ‘a plain man told them that they knew who looked over Lincoln’. This was perhaps a veiled reference to the earl of Suffolk who, like Neile, opposed conferring with the Commons over impositions, and who told the Lords on 31 May that, had Neile’s words come into his mind, he might have spoken them himself. However, it is more likely to have been the king who prompted Neile’s speech: no-one less than James could have authorized him to intervene at the start of a sensitive debate, in a manner which was guaranteed to provoke the lower House, and which pre-empted the efforts of Ellesmere and Abbot to place the onus for disagreement over whether to confer onto the judges. Neile also served the king’s interests by distracting the Commons from the impositions debate for ten days, at the end of which James could plausibly complain that the Commons was wasting his time, so provoking the angry exchanges which suggested that MPs had brought the dissolution upon themselves.76 HMC Downshire, iv. 428; Chamberlain Letters, i. 536; Russell, King Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 120-1; THOMAS HOWARD, 1ST EARL OF SUFFOLK. For Neile, speaking out against the Commons was a high-risk strategy, but, having burned his bridges with Abbot over the Essex divorce case, he needed to ingratiate himself with Suffolk – the chief beneficiary of the dissolution – and confirm his usefulness to his royal master.

Upon the dissolution of Parliament, the bishops offered the crown a benevolence in lieu of the subsidies the Commons had declined to vote. Neile himself donated £100 and a further 42oz. of gilt plate, and collected detailed information about the values of the livings in his diocese during his primary visitation in the summer of 1614. In the following year, he used this information, together with Privy Council orders about the rating of the clergy to provide militia arms, as leverage to persuade recalcitrants to contribute. He ultimately raised £1,960 from his diocese, almost as much as a clerical subsidy.77 Chamberlain Letters, i. 542; Bodl. Tanner 74, f. 40; H. Hajzyk, ‘Church in Lincs. c.1595-c.1640’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1980), 84-5; E351/1950. Lincoln raised £2,226 for the first 1621 clerical subsidy: SP14/133/13.

Valued at £828 p.a., the revenues of Lincoln diocese were not much greater than those of Lichfield. However, during his brief tenure, Neile was able to lease the episcopal manor of Bishop’s Norton, Lincolnshire to his wife and infant son, and take entry fines from eight others.78 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. vi. 56; Hajzyk, 86-7; Foster thesis, 92. He also enjoyed the use of an official residence, Buckden manor house, in Huntingdonshire, which allowed him to maintain links with Cambridge. However, ill health apparently kept him away during the royal visit of February 1615, although he advised the fellows of St John’s about the entertainments they planned to offer the king.79 The Eagle, xvi. 143-4, 237.

‘Durham House’ and the Spanish Match, 1617-23

Andrewes, Neile and Montagu were the principal clerics James chose to accompany him to Scotland in 1617, to argue the case for bringing Scottish forms of worship in line with English norms. Andrewes and Neile duly conferred with some Scottish bishops at Berwick on 12 May, on which day news arrived of the death of William James^*, bishop of Durham. A report of unrest in Durham apparently persuaded the king to nominate Neile to the vacancy immediately. Despite this unexpected promotion, Neile seems to have continued to Edinburgh, where Laud, one of his retinue, offended Scottish sensitivities by conducting a funeral in a surplice. He must have returned south after about a month, though, entering Durham immediately after Bishop James’s funeral on 8 July. He spent the next three weeks at the deanery ordering repairs to his own residence, Durham Castle. He also dined with his chapter, but it was noted that the local gentry neglected to visit; he then rejoined the royal party at Carlisle, on their journey south.80 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 55; CSP Ven. 1615-17, p. 476; Durham (Palace Green), Add. 866, ff. 57v-9; Durham Cathedral Archives, DCD/L/BB/23; Foster thesis, 53-4.

With Andrewes at Ely and Montagu recently translated to Winchester, the promotion to Durham gave Neile a status and income comparable to that of his colleagues in the Chapel Royal. The circumstances of his preferment were particularly fortunate, as it did not leave him beholden to any court faction. Consequently, the fall of Lord Treasurer Suffolk in 1618 left him unharmed. In the same year, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, leader of the Dutch Remonstrant [pro-Arminian] party, requested Neile’s services at the forthcoming Synod of Dort, but the king resolved to send a strongly Calvinist delegation instead.81 Tyacke, 120.

Valued at £1,640 a year, Durham was worth considerably more than Neile’s previous appointments, and it came with its own palace on the Strand – Durham House – where his expanding coterie of followers took up residence. The bishopric controlled almost half of the clerical patronage within the diocese, and a fortuitous series of deaths among the cathedral chapter allowed him to insert his own nominees. Bishops also exercised palatine jurisdiction over county Durham, with control over the shire’s secular courts, and oversight of wardships and mining rights within the shire.82 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. v. 56; J. Freeman, ‘Distribution and Use of Eccles. Patronage’, Last Principality ed. D. Marcombe, 152-75; Foster thesis, 54-5, 92-3. However, Neile acquired an additional jurisdiction in his own right: he was appointed lord lieutenant of county Durham, the first bishop to hold this position since the reign of Queen Mary. As a stranger to military affairs, his first recourse was to solicit advice from Sir Thomas Fairfax^‡ of Denton, Yorkshire, with whom he was probably acquainted from the latter’s service in the Privy Chamber at the start of James’s reign. Fairfax offered a digest of the differing liabilities of common and private arms, the importance of standardized equipment and efficient record-keeping. One of the most important requirements was for a good muster-master, but Durham’s was mired in a protracted dispute with the militia officers over payment of his fee. Neile sympathized with the officers, for in 1620 he confessed to the Privy Council, ‘I could never yet see what service he had done or would do for it’. Accordingly, he replaced him with a man prepared to undertake regular training for half the salary. Neile’s deputies reported many defective arms, which moved him to arrange for new stock to be sent up from London, which were offered for sale to the militiamen at cost price. He also issued instructions to increase the number of militia foot from 800 to 1,000, although it seems unlikely this expansion was implemented for several years.83 Sainty, 19; Durham (Palace Green), Mickleton and Spearman 2, ff. 257, 278, 291-2, 302-7, 310, 334; SP14/108/63; APC, 1619-21, p. 146; Foster thesis, 100-3.

Despite his duties in the north, Neile still spent much of his time in and around court. In the spring of 1620 James unofficially charged Abbot, Neile and Andrewes to assist the Palatine Ambassador, Baron Dohna, in raising a benevolence for his son-in-law, whose acceptance of the throne of Bohemia from Protestant rebels had provoked a war in Germany. The fruit of their labours is unknown, but when James called for another benevolence on his own authority, six months later, Neile, having promised £100, seems not to have paid.84 CSP Ven. 1619-21, pp. 211, 229; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 132; SP14/117/2; APC, 1619-21, pp. 291-3, 334-5.

The deteriorating situation in Germany forced James to call a fresh Parliament, even before news of his son-in-law’s rout at the battle of White Mountain reached England. As the only county in England without representation in the Commons – Bishop James had opposed a bill for enfranchisement in 1614 – Durham had no elections, but the gentry, who were planning another attempt at enfranchisement, assumed that Neile would co-operate, in return for a share of the patronage. The bishop already held the lordship of Northallerton, Yorkshire, where Neile instructed his tenants to vote for Sir Thomas Wentworth^* (later 1st earl of Strafford) and Secretary of State Sir George Calvert^‡ at the Yorkshire election of December 1620.85 A.W. Foster, ‘Struggle for Parlty. Representation for Durham, 1600-41’, Last Principality ed. D. Marcombe, 177-85; Surtees, Hist. co. Dur. iv. 158; Dur. Civic Mems. ed. C.E. Whiting (Surtees Soc. clx), 25-6; Strafforde Letters (1739) ed. W. Knowler, i. 9.

A fresh parliamentary session held an obvious danger for Neile, as the Commons had not forgotten the insults of 1614. However, it also presented him with an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the new favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess of Buckingham. Any threat to Neile from the Commons quickly receded amid widespread agreement that the crisis in Germany required such differences to be laid aside: when Sir Jerome Horsey^‡ urged the Commons to consider the slanders of the ‘unreverend bishop’ on 5 Feb., he was ‘commanded silence’, and his motion was overruled by Sir Robert Phelips^‡ and Edward Alford^‡.86 CJ, i. 508a-b; CD 1621, iv. 11-13; SP14/119/106; Add. 72299, f. 41r-v; R. Zaller, Parl. of 1621, pp. 37-8. The prospect of further investigation may have encouraged Neile to keep a low profile during the opening weeks of the session, though he was, as ever, assiduous in his attendance. Included on the newly established committee for privileges, he assisted in the drafting of the House’s first Standing Orders, insisting that bishops, like lay peers, should have the right to wear their hats while sitting. He was also a member of a delegation sent to apprise the king of differences with the judges, after the latter declined to list the privileges of peers as instructed by the privileges committee.87 LJ, iii. 10b, 27a, 40a; ‘Hastings 1621’, pp. 9-10; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, pp. 1-2. He made only one noteworthy speech before Easter, on 15 Feb., when he called for the revocation of all licences allowing recusants to hold arms, a motion supported by John Egerton^*, 1st earl of Bridgwater. However, Neile then offered the more radical proposal that Catholic priests who took the oath of allegiance should ‘not be kept so strait and close prisoners as those that refuse the oath’, as they were showered with ‘the best meat in any of the papists’ houses’. As the diocesan of a strongly Catholic region, Neile was party to negotiations over enforcement of the recusancy laws, and while his speech echoed views the king had expressed in his published defences of the oath – he may even have offered this proviso at James’s behest – few Protestants acknowledged any distinctions within the Catholic priesthood. Indeed, one newsletter writer simply recorded that Neile had spoken ‘in behalf of the recusants’.88 ‘Hastings 1621’, pp. 18-19; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, pp. 4-5; Add. 72299, f. 41v; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 226; Durham Cathedral Lib., Hunter 67/14, pp. 9-11.

The main business during the opening months of the 1621 Parliament was the pursuit of corruption at court. On 3 Mar. Neile was one of those ordered to attend a conference with MPs to discuss the recapture of Sir Giles Mompesson^‡, a patentee who had absconded from custody. Nine days later, he attended another conference at which the Commons laid out their charges against Mompesson and two other patentees, Sir Francis Michell and Sir John Townshend^‡. When it emerged, on 15 Mar., that the Commons had failed to provide a list of witnesses, Neile urged that the documents they had furnished be searched for the information. On the same day, he was one of those appointed to investigate the charges relating to Mompesson’s patent for the licensing of inns; when the House considered their sentence on 26 Mar., he argued that as Mompesson’s crimes did not constitute felony, he should not lose his life, and that the king should be allowed to mitigate his sentence.89 LJ, iii. 34a, 42a. 46b; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, pp. 44, 46. Meanwhile, the Commons had begun investigating a much more important figure, the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon^*, Viscount St Alban. As the charges against Bacon depended entirely on the testimony of those who had offered bribes, many of the witnesses were reluctant to incriminate themselves. Neile was among those who successfully argued that the witnesses concerned should be offered immunity; and once again, he was appointed to two of the examining committees.90 LJ, iii. 58b, 74a; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 29; C. Russell, PEP, 113. While the king was prepared to sacrifice his chancellor if – as proved the case – flagrant corruption was discovered, he clearly hoped to draw a line under the investigations by punishing the offenders before the Easter recess. Thus, on 22 Mar., Neile supported the efforts of Buckingham, Prince Charles [Stuart^*, prince of Wales] and other privy councillors to secure an early adjournment. Southampton recalled that the Commons also had to have the royal assent to the subsidy bill read to them, and when it arrived that afternoon, Neile called for the Commons to be notified immediately.91 LD 1621, pp.129-31; LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 34.

Neile remained in London over Easter, and was thus on hand when the death of John King created a vacancy at London. He was said to have been under consideration, but he would have gained little in financial terms, as the diocese was less valuable than Durham, and the move would have rendered him liable for another tranche of first fruits; Montaigne, his successor at Lincoln, was appointed instead.92 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 53; HMC Hastings, iv. 289-90; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 362.

Parliament reconvened in a very different mood on 17 Apr., with differences emerging about how far the investigations into corruption might be allowed to proceed. At the outset, Neile and the lord chamberlain, William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, called for the investigation of the vast number of additional charges which had been brought against Bacon during the recess. However, Neile also argued that the favourite’s elder half-brother, Sir Edward Villiers^‡, who held a share in Mompesson’s gold and silver thread patent, should be heard as a witness, not as a delinquent. Neile twice approved the expediting of the proceedings over the next two days, and when Bacon sent in a general confession of guilt on 24 Apr., Neile acknowledged that ‘he affects the lord chancellor’s person, and honours his parts’, but regretfully agreed with the prevailing opinion that the confession was insufficient. Bacon duly capitulated, whereupon Neile was one of those sent to urge the king to sequester him from the chancellorship. However, Neile showed a small shred of compassion at the sentencing on 3 May, arguing unsuccessfully that Bacon should remain a member of the Lords, so that he would ‘remember from whence he hath fallen’.93 LD 1621, pp. 1-3, 6, 9, 17, 42, 63; LJ, iii. 102a; Zaller, 63-5.

By this stage, the Lords had moved on to a fresh investigation of the former attorney general, Sir Henry Yelverton^‡, who had offended the favourite by implicating Sir Edward Villiers in his testimony to the Commons about Mompesson. During a debate on whether to prosecute Mompesson’s accessories, Neile was among those who called for the charges to be read, whereupon it was agreed to focus on Yelverton. The driving force behind this prosecution was the king himself, who made a formal complaint on 24 April. Neile was one of those who sifted through the charges about the gold and silver thread patent over the next few days, presumably to find evidence to distance Villiers from any charges against Yelverton: on 28 Apr. he pronounced himself satisfied that a completely separate charge, the enormous number of writs dispatched to innkeepers, constituted an indictable abuse.94 LD 1621, pp. 4-5, 28, 31-3, 35; Add. 40085, f. 77v; Zaller, 63-4, 117-18. Yelverton, questioned at the bar on 30 Apr., over-reached himself by comparing Buckingham to Edward II’s odious favourite, Hugh, Lord Le Despenser^†, which caused uproar. Neile, presumably hoping to encourage the accused to implicate himself further, suggested Yelverton should put his testimony in writing, and when some of Buckingham’s critics tried to make light of the slander, Neile, doubtless inferring that Yelverton equated King James to the hapless Edward II, called to refer the insult directly to the king. This motion was ignored, but Yelverton’s attempt to attack the favourite had been discredited.95 LD 1621, pp. 49, 52; Zaller, 118-20.

Neile played a more modest role in other investigations which arose after Easter. On 2 May he was one of the committee appointed to hear the charges against the ecclesiastical judge Sir John Bennett^‡, which ran out of time and handed him over to Star Chamber for sentencing. On 7 May, after the judges ruled that MPs could not sit in judgement on the slanderous speeches of Edward Floyd independently of the Lords, Neile was content to let the matter drop without requiring the Commons to surrender their claim to judicature.96 LJ, iii. 104b; LD 1621, p. 70; Zaller, 106-15; Tite, 123-31. Finally, one of the charges against Bacon had implicated Theophilus Field^*, bishop of Llandaff, in a bribery case. On 30 May, Neile observed that any prosecution would be complicated by the fact that no money had actually changed hands, and the House accepted his suggestion that the accused should be referred to Archbishop Abbot, for censure in Convocation. Neile was one of the delegation which persuaded the king to adjourn the session rather than prorogue it over the summer, and was included on the commission for adjournment two days later.97 LJ, iii. 143b-4a, 155a, 158b; THEOPHILUS FIELD.

Shortly after the adjournment, the king appointed John Williams^*, the new bishop of Lincoln, as lord keeper, the first cleric to hold this post since the Reformation. When the Privy Council complained about this decision, James was said to have joked that ‘he had considered and gone over all his nobility and prelates, and could find none every way so fit, unless perhaps they could like better of the bishop of Durham’, at which they apparently recoiled in horror. Shortly thereafter, Abbot accidentally killed one of his gamekeepers, whereupon Montaigne and Williams declined to be consecrated at his bloodied hands. Neile was incorrectly reported to have been one of those appointed to consider the implications.98 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 383; Add. 72254, ff. 57, 61, 64.

When Parliament reconvened in November, the focus was on the Commons, where MPs were approached for a fresh grant of supply. Meanwhile, in the upper House, Lord Keeper Williams was accused of undue haste in awarding a Chancery decree against Sir John Bourchier^‡. Neile leapt to the defence of Williams, a fellow Johnian, asking whether it was proper form to direct this petition to the Lords; to which Williams responded that a reference to the king might have been more appropriate. Two days later, Williams claimed Bourchier had made faces at him, which allowed Neile to call for the petitioner to be summoned as a delinquent.99 LD 1621, p. 108; Add. 40086, f. 51v. See also Abbot’s letter in Stowe 176, f. 213. Bourchier denied this trivial allegation, but he was judged to have wronged Williams in his petition, and was sentenced to imprisonment, a fine, and a public acknowledgement of his fault in Chancery; Neile then recommended that Williams waive everything but the fine, a suggestion the keeper adopted.100 LD 1621, pp. 113, 119-20; HP Commons 1604-29, iii. 264.

Neile was also involved in other business during this sitting: when the Lords’ committee called for the monopolies bill to be rewritten, it was agreed to explain to the Commons why their existing draft had been rejected; Neile urged that this should not be regarded as a general precedent. At the second reading of the bill to make the estates of attainted persons liable for their debts, Neile urged that the measure should only apply to debts contracted before the offences took place, and asked that care be taken not to impeach the rights of the Durham palatinate; he was included on the committee. On 12 Dec., when it was claimed that a peer had sold a parliamentary protection for cash, Neile moved that the definition of a peer’s servant be refined; while during consideration of another privilege case five days later, he observed that the issue under dispute was whether a servant’s goods were also privileged, as the Commons claimed. However, he admitted that time would not permit a full debate of this question.101 LD 1621, pp. 106, 109-10, 118, 125; LJ, iii. 182b.

From the king’s point of view, the angry dissolution of the Parliament which followed was partly mitigated by the collection of another benevolence. Neile raised £533 from the Durham clergy, three-quarters of the value of a clerical subsidy, an average yield for this levy.102 SP14/133/13; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent., U269/1/OE1409. At around the same time he and Andrewes were also charged to persuade the Venetian cleric Marc’Antonio de Dominis, who had come to England and converted to Protestantism some years earlier, not to return to Rome. Their efforts failed, but Neile published their exchanges in both English and Latin, which emphasized the common ground shared by moderate Protestants and anti-papal Catholics.103 CSP Dom. 1619-23, pp. 367-70; R. Neile, M. Ant. De D’nis … His Shiftings in Religion (1624); Tyacke, 122; B. Patterson, Jas. VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, 256-7. Despite this modest personal setback, the stock of Durham House rose steadily at court, in tandem with the prospects for the Spanish Match: in 1623 Laud conducted a public disputation with the Jesuit who had converted Buckingham’s mother to Catholicism; while Richard Montagu – apparently not yet a member of Neile’s circle – answered a Catholic tract, The Gagg of the Reformed Gospel, an attack on the Calvinist doctrine promulgated by the Synod of Dort. Using the same approach Neile had attempted with de Dominis, Montagu’s New Gagg denied that the Reformed tenets under attack were the doctrine of the Church of England.104 Tyacke, 125-8; R. Montagu, A New Gagg for an Old Goose (1624).

The 1624 Parliament and the ‘blessed revolution’ of 1624-5

The return of Prince Charles from Madrid in October 1623, unwed and ultimately convinced he had been duped by his Spanish hosts, turned the certainties of the late Jacobean court upside-down: a sudden shift to a pan-Protestant foreign policy would render the eirenicism of the Durham House group irrelevant. Andrewes, Neile and Laud had several anxious meetings with Matthew Wren^†, who had served as one of Charles’s chaplains in Madrid, to clarify their prospects. Neile asked, bluntly, ‘how the prince’s heart stands to the Church of England, that when God brings him to the crown, we may know what to hope for’, to which Wren responded, ‘I have more confidence of him than of his father’. Reassuring as this was intended to be, Neile’s question exposed the vulnerability of a movement based on the continuing favour of an ageing monarch, and this consideration undoubtedly motivated him to build bridges with Charles and Buckingham (now a duke) over the coming months.105 C. Wren, Parentalia (1750), 45-7; Tyacke, 113-14.

The shifting balance of power at court between the king, his son and his favourite remained unresolved when Parliament opened on 19 Feb. 1624. Neile, who held Buckeridge’s proxy, may have helped his own secretary, Edward Liveley^‡, secure a seat at Berwick-upon-Tweed. He was even more assiduous in his attendance in the Lords than usual, particularly before Easter, when the question of the breach with Spain was under consideration. From the start of the session, he made every effort to ingratiate himself with the prince and the favourite, fussing about the details of the conference of 24 Feb., at which Buckingham, assisted by Charles, presented his relation of the breakdown of the negotiations for the Spanish Match. On 27 Feb., when the House learned of the Spanish ambassador’s complaint that this narrative had slighted his master, Neile called for a vote of thanks, to put the matter beyond doubt.106 LJ, iii. 212a; Add. 40087, ff. 18, 20; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, f. 11; LD 1624 and 1626, p. 3; Russell, PEP, 158-9. Later that day, when Abbot posed the question whether the negotiations with Spain should be continued, Neile took what was, for him, an unusually belligerent tone: ‘that we shall suffer by treaty; we have these seven years treated, your lordships heard that the Match must [be] laid by, and the Palatinate must be first handled’. If imperialist propaganda showed ‘the Catholics to be engaged in this business’, he assured the House that there were ‘hearts and minds in England to go to the Palatinate, whether the King of Spain will or no’. This speech clearly included a degree of hyperbole, as the next morning, he suggested that when the Spaniards realized ‘there is strength in England that we might draw our sword’, this would ‘draw them to reasonable conditions’ – the sceptical line James took when formally approached about a breach with Spain on 5 March. However, in the Lords, Neile’s belligerent rhetoric sufficed to earn him places on a committee searching for precedents for grants of conditional supply, the conference at which the Lords persuaded the Commons to accept the principle of a breach with Spain, and the subcommittee of both Houses which drafted the reasons for a breach which he and others then submitted to the king at Theobalds on 5 March.107 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, ff. 19v-20; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 8, 10; LJ, iii. 236b, 242b; Russell, PEP, 163-5, 177-9; T. Cogswell, Blessed Rev. 174-84. James’s non-committal response dampened enthusiasm for the ‘patriot’ cause, and it was not until 12 Mar. that the Commons devised a suitably equivocal response, offering to assist the king ‘in a parliamentary manner’ if he opted for a breach with Spain. Neile (having attended this conference) led calls for a fresh conference, presumably in the hope that MPs could be persuaded to provide a firmer offer, but they did not, and James responded with a demand for the impossibly large sum of £750,000. The Lords then awaited the Commons’ decision on the amount to be offered, which arrived on 22 Mar.; Neile was one of the delegation sent to relay this offer to the king, who agreed to a breach with Spain for the modest sum of £300,000.108 LJ, iii. 258b, 259b, 273b, 275a; LD 1624 and 1626, p. 29; Russell, PEP, 184-6; Cogswell, 215-16.

Alongside the quest for funds, the anti-Spanish lobby in both Houses mounted a campaign against English Catholics. On 6 Mar., when the Commons sent up the recusancy bill, Neile moved to give Abbot notice of its arrival. Six days later, when informed of Catholic plans to contribute money towards the imperialist cause, Abbot and the lord treasurer, Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex, suggested measures to stop the flow of cash, while Neile warned that funds were also being transported via Newcastle. After Easter, those in favour of war pressed for enforcement of the existing recusancy laws, as a litmus test of the king’s determination to break with Spain. Neile, however, insisted that his master’s approach to the recusancy laws had been misunderstood: when Prince Charles had been in Spain in 1623, James had instructed the judges that they must ‘carry moderate hand against priests’, but even then, ‘if there be any insolency committed on their parts’, the judges were expected ‘to punish them severely.109 Add. 40087, f. 57; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 28, 63; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 14r-v. The actual agreement made with Spain was rather different in tone, see CHARLES STUART.

The final plank of the ‘patriot’ platform was the attack on pro-Spanish courtiers. This was an aspect of the Parliament which Neile is unlikely to have relished, given his earlier connections to the Howards and his inclination to downplay the doctrinal differences between Rome and Canterbury. The centrepiece of the attack on the hispanophiles was the impeachment of Lord Treasurer Middlesex. Although keen to gratify Buckingham, it is hard to identify anything Neile said which was particularly damaging to the treasurer’s interests; his limited involvement in the treasurer’s fall was presumably the minimum he considered necessary to secure the duke’s favour. The case was first raised in the Lords on 9 Apr., when Middlesex was pressed to name his accusers after complaining of harassment in the Commons; Neile insisted he was under no such obligation, but Middlesex nevertheless identified Buckingham’s clients Sir Miles Fleetwood^‡ and Sir Robert Pye^‡. On 12 Apr., when Middlesex irritated his fellow peers by agreeing to answer charges at the bar of the Commons without first seeking permission, Neile dismissed a comment made by Arundel, another leading hispanophile, that a voluntary appearance at the bar was not the same as a summons. Later the same day, the Lords heard a report about their own investigation into the treasurer’s alleged misconduct at the Ordnance Office. Lord Chamberlain Pembroke and the lord steward, James Hamilton^*, 2nd marquess of Hamilton [S] and 1st earl of Cambridge, suggested that Middlesex should only receive a summary of the charges against him, but Neile insisted he should be given the charges in full, drafted by the king’s counsel.110 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 61, 65, 69. Neile was included on the committee for considering a petition from the officials of the Ordnance Office about the treasurer’s misconduct in clearing their accounts, another to consider a petition about the purchase of one of Middlesex’s customs offices, and a third to marshal the evidence prior to judgement.111 LJ, iii. 316a, 327b, 329a; PA. HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 41. At the sentencing on 12 and 13 May, Neile confined himself to minor points: the need for Middlesex to render proper accounts for his tenure of the great wardrobe; a commendation of ‘worthy old Burghley’ as master of the Wards; and a motion to cancel the treasurer’s lease of the sugar farm. He was one of the delegation sent to ask James to sequester Middlesex from his offices, and also remembered the petition from the officers of the Ordnance. Finally, he was named to the committee for the bill to make Middlesex’s estates liable for his fine of £50,000.112 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 76, 84, 88, 92; LJ, iii. 384b, 386a, 396a.

Unlike Middlesex, Lord Keeper Williams escaped any serious challenge during this Parliament, although he was the target of an offensive libel distributed among MPs by Caleb Morley. On 20 Mar., Neile resolved initial doubts as to whether the Lords could take cognizance of this libel by observing that it was addressed to both Houses and not just the Commons. One of many who pressed for a severe sentence against Morley two days later, Neile supported further proceedings against the lawyer who had helped draft the offensive document; and on 7 Apr. he joined calls for a further petition from Morley to be dismissed.113 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 36, 42, 60; LJ, iii. 276a-b; Add. 40087, f. 112v. Whatever the circumstances of the case may have been, Neile was unlikely to desert Williams, who was in the process of donating large sums to St John’s College.114 The Eagle, xvii. 153-6.

The final group to come under fire during the session were the Arminian clergy, most notably Bishop Harsnett, who was attacked by a clique of Norfolk puritans. Neile attended the conference at which the charges against Harsnett were laid out, but the Lords took no action against Harsnett. In the Commons, John Pym investigated Richard Montagu, whose book was accused of spreading ‘infectious and corrupt doctrine’. The matter was referred to Archbishop Abbot, from whose circle the complaint had originated, leaving Montagu acutely aware of his dependence upon the ‘constancy and continuance’ of Neile, upon whose followers he came to depend for support.115 LJ, iii. 384b; Tyacke, 146-50; Cosin Corresp. ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Soc. lii), 21; HP Commons 1604-29, v. 801; H. Schwartz, ‘Arminianism and the Eng. Parl. 1624-9’, JBS, xii. 43-6.

In addition to this busy agenda, Neile found some time for the scrutiny of legislation. His inclusion on the committee for the bill to confirm an exchange of lands between Prince Charles and Sir Lewis Watson^‡ of Northamptonshire appears to have been a straightforward attempt to curry favour, but the same could not be said of his attitude towards the bill to allow Buckingham to acquire the freehold of York House in the Strand from Tobie Matthew^*, archbishop of York, for at the report stage Neile joined forces with Abbot in a quixotic inquiry about the ecclesiastical jurisdiction Matthew might retain over this property.116 LJ, iii. 246a; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 94-5. When the bill to confirm the endowments of hospitals and schools was reported to be defective on 10 Mar., Neile, a member of the committee, inquired what the procedure was for making a fresh draft, whereupon he was included on the committee to prepare a new text. He secured a copy of this bill from the clerk, perhaps because he wanted to be sure of his title to Greetham hospital in county Durham, which he used as a sinecure for friends and family.117 LJ, iii. 219a, 267b; Add. 40087, f. 67; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, f. 60; Borthwick, Sub.Bk.2, ff. 72, 85, 88. On 12 Mar., immediately after the third reading of the bill to prevent swearing, Neile moved for an amendment, apparently to remove the clause allowing constables to whip children for their transgressions; he was informed that he had spoken too late, and the bill passed upon a division. At the third reading of the estate bill for Anthony Browne^*, 2nd Viscount Montagu a week later, Abbot and Neile both endorsed the Commons’ decision to punish an interested party who had tried to approach some committee members privately; the bill itself passed unchanged. As the bill to enfranchise county Durham passed without incident, Neile, a member of the committee, may be assumed to have approved of its plans to grant representation to the county and city of Durham, and the prince’s manor of Barnard Castle. However, James vetoed the bill, on the grounds that the House of Commons was already too large.118 LJ, iii. 402b; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 96; Foster, ‘Parlty. Representation’, 190-1. Finally, on 29 May, the last day of the session, Neile was one of the commissioners appointed to meet during the prorogation to resolve a private dispute over a long lease on Bishop Field’s manor of Llandaff, Glamorgan.119 Add. 40087, f. 76v; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 33-4; LJ, iii. 421b.

By the autumn of 1624 it was clear that the Spanish Match had been superseded by a French Match: the need for another papal dispensation obliged the crown to reverse its modest attempts to enforce the recusancy laws; and the prospect of a Catholic queen brought the eirenic rhetoric of Arminianism back into favour at court. It was in this context that Montagu resolved ‘to write the Gagg anew’, answering both his Catholic and puritan critics, a decision he apparently reached in October 1624, shortly after the proclamation announcing that Parliament was prorogued until 16 Feb. 1625 had been issued. With Archbishop Abbot keeping an eye on him, it is unlikely Montagu would have embarked upon this undertaking without Neile’s encouragement, and it took the combined efforts of the Durham House circle to proofread the text, find a licenser and printer, and arrange for it to be shown to the king, all the while keeping the project secret from Abbot and his censors.120 Cosin Corresp. 22-3, 32-3, 37, 49; Stuart Royal Proclamations I: Jas. I ed. J.F. Larkin and P.L. Hughes, 606-7; Tyacke, 126-8. The preface to this work, Appello Caesarem, claimed that King James had inspected it shortly before his death, giving ‘express order unto Doctor [Francis] White^*, the reverend dean of Carlisle [later bishop of Ely], for the authorizing and publishing thereof’. As Montagu had finished the text by 12 Dec. 1624, it is possible that this was true. If so, it was probably Neile who presented the text to James; Montagu certainly assumed that he would undertake this task.121 R. Montagu, Appello Caesarem, sig. a3r-v; Cosin Corresp. 32-3, 37, 63.

‘Durham House’ ascendant, 1625-8

James’s death and the arrival of Henrietta Maria ensured that there was no official reaction to Montagu’s book in the opening months of Charles’s reign, although there were protests from Oxford University, and the author expected ‘missives and pursuivants daily’. In the absence of clear leadership, Abbot, however great his annoyance may have been, understandably opted to do nothing.122 Cosin Corresp. 69-71; Tyacke, 148-50.

The new Parliament, which began at Westminster on 18 June, was sparsely attended because of the plague, although Neile was present at almost every sitting until the adjournment on 11 July. He was included on the committee for privileges, and was also named to committees on bills to confirm the copyholds on two duchy of Cornwall manors. His remaining legislative interests including helping to prepare another draft of the hospitals bill, the drafting and delivery of the petition for enforcement of the recusancy laws, and formulating orders for the relief of plague victims.123 Procs. 1625, pp. 49, 52, 79-81, 86, 88, 95, 97-9.

For Durham House, the crux of the session was the Commons’ investigation of Montagu, who was detained for contempt. Under examination, Montagu claimed both his works had been printed by royal authority – the preface to the New Gagg said nothing of this – while Abbot complained that, as he had been granted no powers of compulsion, he could only advise Montagu ‘to explicate those places that did offend’. On 7 July, the Commons found Montagu guilty of ‘a great contempt against this House’, but held his punishment over until the session reconvened at Oxford on 1 August. ‘The plot is strong against us’, claimed Montagu, warning of plans to deprive some of the Durham House circle of their preferments, but his alarm was unwarranted and the king insisted that his chaplain should be freed. Montagu failed to appear at Oxford, citing a ‘passion hypochondriacal’, and the early dissolution frustrated efforts to call him to the bar.124 Ibid. 240, 330-5, 378-83; Cosin Corresp. 78-9; Schwartz, 49-51; Tyacke, 148-50.

Neile’s absence from the Oxford sitting may have been intended to avoid a direct confrontation with puritan MPs over Montagu, whose cause was defended by Laud, Buckeridge and John Howson^*, bishop of Oxford.125 Schwartz, 52-3. Political considerations apart, with the outbreak of war imminent, Neile also had much to do in Durham. Over the next five months he mustered the militia, rated the local gentry for privy seal loans, disarmed the recusant gentry, watched the coasts for Dunkirk privateers, planned new fortifications at Tynemouth, and spent £174 on militia arms for 60 pikemen and 60 musketeers.126 SP16/7/65; 16/8/48; Durham (Palace Green), Mickleton and Spearman 2, ff. 354-5, 358-64, 367-74; Foster thesis, 103-4.

At the New Year, Neile was summoned to London to assist in planning the coronation, and on 16 Jan. 1626 he, along with Montaigne, Andrewes, Buckeridge and Laud, having met to consider Montagu’s work, certified that Montagu had ‘not affirmed anything to be the doctrine of the Church of England, but that which in our opinions is the doctrine of the Church of England, or agreeable thereunto’. This formula could never satisfy the Calvinists, so at the request of Robert Rich^*, 2nd earl of Warwick, Buckingham arranged a conference of clerics and peers at his London residence, York House, on 11 and 17 Feb. 1626, a few days into the new parliamentary session. Montagu was defended by Bishop Buckeridge, Dean White and Neile’s chaplain John Cosin^† (who also later became bishop of Durham), but was opposed by Thomas Morton^*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (another Johnian of Neile’s generation) and John Preston, master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Montagu’s defenders were all intimates of Neile, and his absence must have been as conspicuous as that of Abbot. Neither side emerged with a clear-cut victory, which left the Durham House group vulnerable to impeachment in Parliament, a threat which drove them into Buckingham’s camp for the remainder of the duke’s life. In fact, their fears turned out to be exaggerated: although Montagu was threatened with a bill of attainder early in the session, the Commons, transfixed by the proceedings against Buckingham, did not begin their investigation until 17 Apr., and their impeachment case was incomplete at the dissolution almost two months later.127 Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 176-9; vi. 249; Cosin Corresp. 89; Tyacke, 153-4, 165-80.

With the stakes so high, Neile attended almost every day of the 1626 Parliament, where he held the proxy of Francis Godwin^*, bishop of Hereford. His secretary Edward Liveley, while offered a seat by the Berwick corporation, was not returned.128 Procs. 1626, i. 10; HP Commons, 1604-29, v. 149. With the initial investigations of Buckingham’s conduct being handled by the Commons, there was little controversy in the Lords until 25 Feb., when the privileges committee (to which Neile had been appointed on 15 Feb.) reported some alterations to the House’s Standing Orders. Several were innocuous – Neile quibbled over the wording of the first – but a furore erupted over the order barring any peer from holding more than two proxies. Buckingham, who held 13, was furious, and his anger was shared by his clients, including Neile, who termed this order ‘a restraint of your power’.129 Procs. 1626, i. 48, 71-2; Russell, PEP, 284-5. On 3 Mar. Neile was one of a delegation ordered to meet representatives of the Commons to hear charges against Buckingham – presumably relating to the arrest of a French ship, the St Peter of Le Havre – but this investigation produced no substantive results. On 16 Mar., the Lords heard a petition against a Chancery decree awarded by Bishop Williams, who, having been denied a writ of summons, languished at Buckden. Neile and Buckingham both argued that Williams should not be pressed further on this matter, presumably because the bishop’s presence could only have added to the duke’s woes.130 Procs. 1626, i. 99, 167-8; Russell, PEP, 279-82, 285. On 5 Apr. the Lords debated the absence of another of duke’s enemies, the earl of Arundel, arrested under a royal warrant a month earlier. Previous inquiries had led to the appointment of a subcommittee to search for precedents; but on this occasion Neile mischievously suggested that the new debate had terminated the powers of the subcommittee. Lord Montagu swiftly resolved this conundrum by observing that its members could make a brief report of their findings to date, and then resume their labours.131 Procs. 1626, i. 260-2.

The Lords’ debates were transformed by the arrival of John Digby^*, 1st earl of Bristol. Having been kept under house arrest and denied a writ of summons, he was brought to the bar of the House on 1 May to answer articles of impeachment filed by King Charles. Two days earlier, the privileges’ committee reported that Bristol was entitled to sit in the House until formally charged, which would have allowed him free rein to attack Buckingham. However, Neile was adamant that the earl should stand at the bar as a delinquent, rather than be allowed to take his seat, arguing against the applicability of precedents which included his own of 31 May 1614. His instincts were proven correct, for after being admitted his seat, Bristol interrupted the king’s charges against him in order to make his own allegations against Buckingham, which included the damaging claim of the royal physician George Eglisham that the favourite had hastened King James’s death by medical malpractice. Several of the duke’s supporters argued that Bristol’s charges were inadmissible, as they had already been presented to the Commons on 21 Apr., while Neile went further, claiming the charges represented ‘a calumny’ against the Lords’ jurisdiction.132 Ibid. 321, 346-7; Russell, PEP, 302-5; GEORGE VILLIERS. Faced with Bristol’s attempt to steal their thunder, the Commons presented their own charges against Buckingham to the Lords on 8 and 10 May; Sir Dudley Digges^‡ angered the king with his delivery of the poisoning charge, and he was only released after a majority of the Lords exonerated him on 15 May. Like many of the duke’s supporters, Neile refused to comment on Digges’s meaning: ‘the words, being spoken, must be taken as they are’. Two days later, Buckingham asked the Lords whether he was expected to answer the Commons’ charges, or Bristol’s, or both. Several speakers suggested the duke should not answer the controversial aggravation [summing-up] of either set of charges. Neile disagreed, saying that he should be left to decide for himself whether to reply to either of these particular accusations, a proposal which the House then adopted.133 Procs. 1626. i. 483, 497; Russell, PEP, 305-7. The Lords finally began to examine Bristol’s witnesses on 9 June (Neile was one of the committee handling this task), but five days later, Bristol claimed Secretary of State Edward, 1st Lord Conway^* had kept important evidence from him; during this angry exchange, Neile moved to clear Conway of any impropriety, which was only done after Bristol had been withdrawn from the House.134 Procs. 1626, i. 596-9, 629-30; Russell, PEP, 320-1.

For all the factional controversy, the Lords transacted some routine business during the 1626 session. On 11 Feb. Neile was named to a committee for the bill to preserve crown revenues, yet two days later, when he asked to refer something to this committee, his motion was denied, for reasons which are not apparent. His lieutenancy clearly explains his inclusion on the committee for the bill to improve militia arms, and when this bill was reported on 27 Feb., he moved to add the word ‘wards’, i.e. the hundredal divisions in county Durham, to the existing draft. On 6 Mar. he was named to the committee for national defence, which later considered a proposal to fund a system of convoys along the east coast, a major issue for the port towns of his diocese.135 Procs. 1626, i. 43, 46, 53, 75, 80, 110, 536. On 15 Apr., at the second reading of the scandalous ministers’ bill, he proved just as implacably opposed to the measure as he had in 1610: ‘strange that the ecclesiastical laws are not sufficient to reform the ministers without aid of the seculars’; he was not named to the committee. As the Durham bench was dominated by clerical magistrates, he is unlikely to have approved of a bill to reduce their number, although on this occasion, he was named to the committee; he was also named to the bill for increasing ministerial stipends.136 Ibid. 268, 327, 357.

The angry dissolution of Parliament on 15 June owed something to Neile’s interference. For all the bluster of the impeachment charges, there were those among the duke’s critics who hoped to persuade Buckingham to relinquish some of his offices. However, Buckingham’s election as chancellor of Cambridge University on 1 June, in succession to the late earl of Suffolk, signalled his determination to defy his enemies.137 Ibid. iv. 296, 310; HMC Skrine, 69, 72; R. Lockyer, Buckingham, 325. Neile recommended the duke to the university authorities on 29 May, informing the vice chancellor, Dr John Gostlin, that the king had signified ‘how well it would please him’; the heads of house carried the vote for Buckingham by a narrow margin.138 CUL, CUA, Lett.12.A1, A2; The Eagle, xvi. 243-4; C.H. Cooper, Annals of Camb. iii. 185-8; V. Morgan, Hist. of the Univ. of Camb. ii. 83; GEORGE VILLIERS.

To quash further doctrinal controversy, the king issued a proclamation on 14 June, forbidding the dissemination of ‘any new inventions, or opinions concerning religion’, and requiring the bishops and secular authorities to ‘reclaim and repress’ any who contravened this order. Montagu assumed this was aimed at his Arminian views, but Neile used it against Calvinist preaching, instructing Vice Chancellor Gostlin to suppress a question about absolute predestination scheduled for debate at the divinity act of the Cambridge commencement.139 Cosin Corresp. 95-6; Stuart Royal Proclamations II: Chas. I ed. J.F. Larkin, 90-3; CUL, CUA, Lett.12.A6.

Neile returned to Durham in the summer of 1626, where he undertook the expansion and training of the county militia, and the building of new fortifications at Tynemouth.140 SP16/33/39; 16/34/80; APC, 1626, pp. 232-3. He spent the winter at Durham House where, in December, he consecrated Francis White as bishop of Carlisle. Archbishop Abbot was then recuperating from a serious illness, and Neile was perhaps the natural choice, as the senior bishop from the northern province then in London. Nevertheless, an anonymous libel by one of his enemies asked, ‘is an Arminian [White] now made bishop? And is a consecration translated from Lambeth to Durham House?’141 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 155-6, 179.

The king’s decision to dispense with Parliament and resort to ‘new counsels’ was particularly congenial for Neile and Laud, who were sworn as privy councillors in April 1627, when the Venetian ambassador described them as ‘Protestants rather than puritans, one of them being about to publish a book on the seven sacraments, whereby the Anglican Church would draw somewhat nearer to the Catholic’.142 APC, 1627, p. 253; CSP Ven. 1626-8, p. 218. The book was John Cosin’s Collection of Private Devotions (1627). Neile’s position was strengthened still further in October 1627, when he and four other Arminian bishops replaced Archbishop Abbot, who was sequestered from office for refusing the king’s instruction to licence Robert Sibthorpe’s absolutist sermon for publication.143 R. Cust, Forced Loan, 62-3; Rushworth, i. 431-57; Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 206.

Winchester and the 1628-9 Parliament

Following the death of Bishop Andrewes in September 1626, Neile was tipped to succeed him at Winchester, but financial necessity forced the king to keep the bishopric vacant, and his congé d’élire was not granted until 16 Nov. 1627. At £2,250 a year, the diocesan revenues were second only to Canterbury, and the perks included a town house in Southwark.144 Birch, Chas. I, i. 179, Fasti, iii. 81; Foster thesis, 55-6. Although Buckingham was still making his way back from campaigning in France at the time the process of appointment began, Neile demonstrated his gratitude to the favourite on his arrival at Winchester by appointing one of the duke’s chaplains as master of the nearby St Cross hospital, and the duke’s secretary Robert Mason^‡ as his diocesan chancellor.145 Lockyer, 402; Birch, Chas. I, i. 324; Borthwick, Sub.Bk.2, f. 96; HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 927.

The 1628-9 Parliament opened only a month after Neile’s translation to Winchester. In tandem with Laud, Neile held the proxies of Tobie Matthew^*, archbishop of York and Lewes Bayly^*, bishop of Bangor, and he and Buckeridge shared the proxy of the ailing bishop Montaigne of London. His secretary Edward Liveley was returned for Berwick once again. He attended only a little over half the Lords’ sittings in 1628, being absent for almost a month during the middle of the session, perhaps because of ill health.146 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 25. Named to the committee for privileges at the start of proceedings, he later helped to gather lists of witnesses for the privilege case of Buckingham’s sister-in-law, the estranged wife of John Villiers^*, Viscount Purbeck. Having helped to secure the king’s permission for a fast day, Neile apparently objected to the choice of two Calvinists, Joseph Hall^*, bishop of Exeter and John Davenant^*, bishop of Salisbury, as preachers. As a native of Westminster, he remembered, on 4 Apr., the eve of Parliament’s own fast, that the citizens would have to attend services on another day, as the Lords and Commons required the Abbey and St Margaret’s for their own use; he also asked about other towns where the fast would interrupt local markets or fairs.147 Ibid. 73-4, 78-9, 86, 98-9, 152-3, 197-8, 206.

Neile played very little part in the key debate of the session, on the liberties of the subject. In considering the judges’ ruling in the Five Knights’ Case on 14 Apr., he made a rambling speech which apparently attempted to establish that a sentence in King’s Bench could be overturned on appeal in Parliament. He attended most of the Lords’ debates on the Petition of Right in mid May, but his only mention in the records of these days was as part of a delegation sent to ask Charles when he was free to receive the final draft.148 Ibid. 218-19, 222, 546 One of the committee who drafted a petition to the king for enforcement of the recusancy laws, Neile insisted that a clause about Catholic priests be altered to read ‘orders taken by authority of the see of Rome’, a formula which reflected the 1584 Jesuits and Seminaries Act. When the draft returned from the Commons on 29 Mar., he observed that Berwick was not in Northumberland, and noted that the 1606 Recusancy Act had forgotten to include sheriffs in the list of offices barred to Catholics; the House resolved to lay this latter point aside, to save time.149 Ibid. 96, 105-7, 122-4. He was, once again, named to the committee for the hospitals bill, which he warmly endorsed on 4 Apr., for the role such foundations played in offering local hospitality; while he commended the bill for the estates of the adolescent Dutton Gerard^*, 3rd Lord Gerard, on the grounds that all orphans deserved ‘great care’.150 Ibid. 120, 151-3, 192.

On 4 June, in the tense interval between the king’s two answers to the Petition of Right, Buckingham reported a slander circulating in Banbury, Oxfordshire, a town notorious for its godly zeal, ‘that his grace [Buckingham] and the lord bishop of Durham [sic Neile] have plotted to carry the whole House’.151 Ibid. 583n7. This speech was crossed out in the records. The linkage between secular and religious absolutism was raised on the following day in the Commons: when the king ordered MPs not to attack his ministers, Christopher Sherland^‡ asked, ‘why is the faction of the Arminians so fostered, that are men of loose lives and large consciences and care not what they do? And these have most flattered greatness in the late oppressions’. This debate inspired the Commons to draft a wide-ranging Remonstrance against Buckingham, and on 14 June Pembroke’s client Walter Long^‡ moved that Neile and Laud should be named as the duke’s Arminian advisers. Richard Spencer, one of the few MPs who sympathized with Arminian doctrine, insisted this allegation should be backed with proof, while Lively added ‘that he heard Bishop Neile protest … that never line of Arminianism ever came within his study’. However, his fellow Berwick Member, Sir John Jackson^‡, retorted ‘that in Durham he [Neile] had poisoned the whole see with men of that profession’. The Remonstrance cited the Arminians for ‘subversion of religion’, naming Neile and Laud as ‘justly suspected to be unsound in their opinions that way’, but when it was presented to the king on 17 June, Charles spurned its advice and gave Buckingham his hand to kiss.152 CD 1628, iv. 116, 313, 320-2, 326; HMC Cowper, i. 350-1; HP Commons 1604-29, v. 157-9; Russell, PEP, 384-5; L.J. Reeve, Chas. I and the Road to Personal Rule, 25-9. This meant that godly MPs were obliged to focus their energies instead on smaller fry: Roger Manwaring^† (later bishop of St Davids) was impeached, and forced to recant absolutist opinions he had unwisely repeated when Parliament was in session; the charges against Montagu were revisited, though once again, the investigation ran out of time; and Thomas Jackson, another of Neile’s protégés, also came under suspicion.153 H.F. Snapp, ‘Impeachment of Roger Maynwaring’, HLQ, xxx. 217-29; CD 1628, iii. 151, 600; iv. 291, 298; Tyacke, 159-60.

While Neile and Laud emerged from the 1628 session unscathed, the reconfiguration of court politics over the following months yielded mixed results: Laud, Harsnett, Howson and White were all translated, while Richard Corbet^* was appointed bishop of Oxford, and Montagu, bishop of Chichester; but Abbot, was restored to his episcopal functions, and Buckingham’s assassination removed the Arminians’ chief patron. At Durham, Peter Smart attacked Neile’s coterie on the cathedral chapter, and, when cited into High Commission, he threatened to pursue his enemies in Parliament.154 Rymer, viii. pt. 2, p. 264; SP16/113/65; Cosin Corresp, 147-52; Tyacke, 161-2; Reeve, 62-4; K. Fincham and P. Lake, ‘Eccl. Policies of Jas. I and Chas. I’, Early Stuart Church ed. K. Fincham, 28-9 Apparently at the king’s suggestion, Montagu, Cosin, Manwaring and Sibthorpe were granted pardons for any offence caused by their controversial works, in the hope that this would dissuade the Commons from further investigation. Attorney General Sir Robert Heath^‡ submitted the draft of this pardon to Neile for correction, who seems to have broadened its scope to cover Cosin against the allegation that he had privately disparaged the royal supremacy. Neile dismissed this charge as founded upon ‘malice’, but admitted to Heath he had not informed the king about it, ‘because he thought it would come to nothing’.155 CD 1629, pp. 39-40, 43-7, 125-6, 130-1, 174-7; Cosin Corresp. 154; SP16/118/33.

Neile regularly attended the Lords during the 1629 parliamentary session, but played little part in its deliberations. At the start of the session he was named to the committees for privileges and for petitions, and he was included on a handful of bill committees, for measures in which he had previously shown some interest: preservation of crown revenues; endowments of hospitals; repair of churches and ministerial stipends; and defence of the realm. On 19 Feb. he was one of a delegation who delivered a petition to the king, seeking relief for the impoverished Robert de Vere^*, 19th earl of Oxford.156 LJ, iv. 6a-b, 8a, 10b, 31a, 34b, 37b.

Neile was absent from the Lords during the first week of February, at which time he came under investigation in the Commons. On 4 Feb. Sir Robert Phelips reported the testimony of Attorney General Heath, who claimed that Neile had attempted to secure pardons for Cosin and the other Arminians, which was investigated at the committee for religion two days later. On hearing what Cosin was alleged to have said against the supremacy, Sir John Eliot^‡ fulminated that his words constituted ‘treason, and that proved upon oath’. When this was reported to the Commons on 7 Feb., Liveley was required to confirm that many of the emendations to Cosin’s pardon were in his master’s hand. Sir Daniel Norton^‡ then broadened the investigation, recounting an argument between Neile and Dr Robert Moore, one of the prebends at Winchester:

… the bishop of Winchester said to him, he had often heard him preach before the king’s Majesty [James] against popery, which was very pleasing to the king, but now he must not. The doctor answered that he must, if it comes his way; said the bishop, you must not: and further your [communion] tables in the quire stand as in alehouses.157 Meaning not set altarwise. The doctor replied, they stood according to law; said the bishop, there be articles to the contrary.

At this, Phelips tartly observed ‘the bishop of Winchester hath a good will to make Durham and Winchester synonymous’. Moore was duly summoned to give evidence against Neile.158 CD 1629, pp. 46, 50-1, 133, 180, Fasti, iii. 98; Wentworth Pprs. ed. J.P. Cooper (Cam. Soc. 4th ser. xii), 314; Fincham and Tyacke, 190.

Further evidence of Neile’s heterodox opinions was laid before the Commons on 11 Feb., when Oliver Cromwell^‡ reported that Dr Thomas Beard of Huntingdon had told him of a similar incident from Neile’s time as bishop of Lincoln: when ordered to repeat a Paul’s Cross sermon by the Catholic turncoat Dr William Alabaster, Beard had objected that the sermon in question was ‘flat popery’. Beard subsequently took the advice of the then bishop of Ely, Nicholas Felton^*, and attacked Alabaster’s life and doctrine, for which he was sent for by Neile, and ‘exceedingly [be]rated for what he had done’. Phelips and several others then insisted that Neile had treated Dr Hamlett Marshall, vicar of Odiham, Hampshire, in a similar fashion. Edward Kirton^‡ thereupon successfully moved for Marshall and Beard to be summoned as witnesses, observing that Neile, having ‘leaped through many bishoprics’, had left a trail of popery behind him.159 CD 1629, pp. 59, 139, 192-3.

Neile took these developments seriously, and shortly thereafter – probably in the middle of February – began drafting a detailed answer to the charges of popery, Arminianism, the procuring of the pardons, and the testimonies of Dr Moore and others. He dismissed the charge of Catholicism as ‘an indefinite imputation of popery’, listing 20 specific points of Catholic doctrine with which he disagreed, and citing his efforts to suppress recusancy in the north. He also insisted that a stone altar had been set up at Durham Cathedral ‘by the dean without my privity’. As for Arminianism, like many English divines he claimed ‘I do not know that I have ever read three lines of Arminius’ writings’, insisting that the only time he had examined the question of predestination was in 1595, at the time of the Baro controversy, when he had drafted a refutation of Baro’s views for Burghley’s use. He admitted his involvement in procuring the pardons for Cosin and Sibthorpe, but observed that he had not been the only one consulted about the draft. Finally, he insisted that in an interview with Dr Moore in June 1628, he had merely instructed Moore ‘to forbear matters of state in the pulpit’.160 Durham Cathedral Lib., Hunter 67/14.

Neile never completed his draft defence, as his efforts were overtaken by the collapse of the session. On 2 Mar. 1629 the Commons’ Speaker, Sir John Finch^† (later Lord Finch), was restrained in his chair while Sir John Eliot inveighed against the evils of the kingdom. His main target was the lord treasurer, Richard Weston^*, Lord Weston (later 1st earl of Portland), but he also had the Arminians in his sights:

There amongst them some prelates of the Church, that great bishop of Winchester and his followers, and what they have done to cast an aspersion upon the honour, and piety, and goodness of the king, hath been made apparent unto us. These are not all, but it is extended to some others, who I fear in guilt and conscience of their own ill desires, do join their power with that bishop and the rest, to draw from his Majesty a jealousy of the Parliament. Among them I shall not fear to name the great lord treasurer …

Eliot ended with a declaration that any who promoted innovation in religion should ‘be accounted a capital enemy of the king and kingdom’.161 CD 1629, pp. 259, 267.

Eliot’s futile demonstration did Neile’s cause an invaluable favour, as it committed Charles to a policy of ruling without resort to Parliament, which allowed Neile, Laud and their allies to effect a radical remodelling the national Church, without fear of being called to account by the Commons. Moreover, with the benefit of hindsight, it is surprising that MPs opted to pursue Neile in 1629, as Laud was the rising star fast becoming Charles’s trusted lieutenant. However, Laud’s natural caution made it difficult to pin charges on him, while Neile’s long career as a diocesan and court preacher gave his enemies wider scope for censure. It is also possible that, in pursuing Neile, the Commons were offering Charles the opportunity to use Neile as a scapegoat, while retaining the services of Laud, who was rapidly overtaking his rival in Charles’s esteem.

Although almost 70, Neile’s personal energy continued unabated well into the 1630s. It was presumably at his entreaty that Justice Yelverton attempted to arbitrate the dispute between Peter Smart and John Cosin at the Durham assizes in July 1629, although without success. That autumn John Holles^*, 1st earl of Clare, the father of one of Eliot’s associates of 2 Mar., was briefly committed to Neile’s custody at Winchester House. In March 1630, Neile and Harsnett, now archbishop of York, took Bishop Davenant to task for offending the king by preaching a court sermon about predestination.162 Cosin Correspondence, 157-8; CSP Ven. 1629-32, p. 233; Bodl., Tanner 71, f. 41. Following Harsnett’s death in May 1631, the vacancy at York was offered to Neile. He was reportedly reluctant to accept, an assertion borne out by the ten month delay in his appointment. This was perhaps partly because York was less well-endowed than Winchester, partly because he was required to surrender his post as clerk of the closet to William Juxon^† but most of all, because he had not yet abandoned hope of succeeding Abbot at Canterbury. Laud’s biographer plausibly claimed that he finally overrode such considerations in order ‘to serve his Majesty and the Church in what place soever, though to his personal trouble and particular loss’; he was translated on 18 Mar. 1632.163 Hist. of the Church and Manor of Wigan ed. G.T.O. Bridgeman (Surtees Soc. n.s. xvi), 338-9; Foster thesis, 231-3; Fairfax Corresp. ed. G.W. Johnson, i. 237-8; P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicanus (1671), p. 227; Fasti, iv. 3.

Archbishop of York, 1632-40

As they usually had, Neile and Laud worked well together at York and Canterbury, implementing reforms to worship and ecclesiastical discipline consistently across the nation. Neile quickly assembled an energetic team of officials to assist him: John Cosin was already archdeacon of the East Riding, while the new archbishop’s nephew John Neile was ordained in 1632, granted a prebend at Southwell, Nottinghamshire and appointed archdeacon of Cleveland in 1638; Peter Titley (perhaps also a kinsman) acquired a Southwell prebend. The diocesan chancellor, William Easdall, was an old colleague from Westminster Abbey, while the newly qualified Edward Mottershead became the lynchpin of the York High Commission.164 Foster thesis, 236-40, 277-8. Neile’s officials conducted a thorough visitation of the northern province (except for Durham and Sodor and Man) in the winter of 1632-3, while Neile himself was the first prelate to inaugurate a thoroughgoing campaign for the positioning of railed altars at the east end of every chancel.165 Fincham and Tyacke, 200-6. We owe this point to Ken Fincham.

Until his health began to fail, Neile spent his winters in London, attending the Privy Council – but the annual reports he sent to the king demonstrate that he used visitation reports to keep an eye on his subordinates. In January 1634, Bishop Morton of Durham sent him no more than a list of preachers within his diocese, whereupon Neile warned him that some were, perhaps, ‘not so conformable as they ought to be’. Neile listed many defects in Chester and Carlisle dioceses, including puritanism, recusancy, irregular usage of the Prayer Book, lax diocesan officials, dilapidations and disrespect shown towards communion tables; but he was more circumspect about Sodor and Man, where there was friction with William Stanley^*, 6th earl of Derby over the appointment of a new bishop.166 Foster thesis, 244-55; ‘Annual Accts.’ ed. Fincham, 87-94; HMC Cowper, ii. 31-2. John Bridgeman^*, bishop of Chester, recently investigated for embezzlement of ecclesiastical fines, received close scrutiny from Neile, who reminded him that the king was kept abreast of developments in his diocese; Laud certainly received other reports suggesting that the diocese was not in such good order as Bridgeman claimed.167 Hist. of the Church and Manor of Wigan, 374, 377-9; Staffs. RO, D1287/98/3, A93 (Neile to Bridgeman, 21 Mar. 1633/4, 12 July 1634); Foster thesis, 275; JOHN BRIDGEMAN.

It is difficult to assess the impact Neile made on York diocese during the 1630s, as many of his achievements were undone immediately after his death. He instituted major repairs at his diocesan properties, as he had done previously at Westminster and Durham, and did his best to encourage refurbishment of churches. However, a fear of conventicles discouraged him from encouraging fresh building, and when he did consecrate a new chapel in Leeds in 1634, he immediately suspended the minister for criticizing John Cosin’s consecration sermon.168 Foster thesis, 259-60, 266-8; Diary of Henry Slingsby ed. D. Parsons, 19-20; Add. 4274, ff. 253-6. He clashed with the puritan aldermen of York, particularly over their attendance at services in the Minster, while he also had problems over enforcing the 1633 Book of Sports, and persuading Dutch settlers in the Hatfield Levels to use the Prayer Book. These initiatives and the work of his church courts indicate that a great deal of effort was expended, even if the resurgence of heterodox opinions after 1640 indicates that nonconformity went underground, rather than vanished.169 Foster thesis, 261, 263-6, 268-72, 274-5; R.A. Marchant, Puritans and the Church Courts in the Dioc. of York, 54-69. He had less impact on Catholicism after an early misunderstanding with Lord President Wentworth, whose composition commission regarded recusancy fines as no more than a revenue source.170 Strafforde Letters, ii. 107-8, 116. Neile claimed to have opposed composition: Durham Cathedral Lib., Hunter 67/14, p. 11.

Even upon his arrival at York, there were those who considered Neile ‘an old diseased man, and troubled with gout, and could not live long’, but it was some years before he began to lose his customary stamina. After May 1636 he ceased to attend the Privy Council, and for the first time in his long career, he took up permanent residence in his own diocese. In the autumn of 1637 he was spurred into fresh action by reports that Bishop Bridgeman had failed to disperse an enthusiastic crowd who turned out to greet William Prynne^‡ as he passed through Chester on his way to prison at Caernarvon.171 PC2/44, f. 107v; Staffs. RO, D1287/9/8/3 (A93, Neile to Bridgeman 22 Sept., 14 Oct., 16 Nov., 5 Dec. 1637, 4 Jan., 5 Feb. 1637/8); Foster thesis, 276. Neile also made efforts to raise funds for the Bishops’ Wars, and kept an eye on puritans he suspected of corresponding with the Scots, particularly the Newcastle preacher Robert Jenison, with whom he had sparred during his time at Durham. However, he was reluctant to remove Jenison, and only did so in October 1639, at the king’s personal insistence.172 Foster thesis, 281-6.

By 1640 Neile was clearly running out of energy: his diocesan report that January, which ran to a single page, apologized for the ‘tedious discourses’ he had submitted in previous years. He was licensed to absent himself from Parliament in April 1640; the recipient of his proxy is not recorded. His only son, Sir Paul Neile^‡, was returned to the Commons for Ripon, an episcopal estate.173 ‘Annual Accts.’ ed. Fincham, 148-9; LJ, iv. 58a; SO3/12, unfol. (Mar. 1640); Foster thesis, 290. After the dissolution of the Short Parliament, the York Convocation, like its southern counterpart, was kept in session, passing the controversial 1640 Canons and a grant of six clerical subsidies. Neile’s officials also attempted to hold a triennial visitation, with little success. Neile himself loaned the king £2,000 towards the war effort against the Scots, but waived repayment in his will of 23 June 1640. This may explain why his wife and son failed to erect a monument over his grave in York Minster, though he hardly left them unprovided for, as they inherited properties in Yorkshire and Derbyshire. Neile also made bequests to relatives and servants, while his son received the ring Christian IV of Denmark had given him in 1606. He died on 31 Oct. 1640, rendering himself, as William Prynne^‡ observed, ‘Parliament proof’ when the Long Parliament opened three days later.174 Foster thesis, 290-1; SO3/12 (July 1640); Borthwick, Reg. 32, ff. 4v-5v; Oxford DNB, xl. 361.