ROBINSON, Henry (1551/3-1616)

A native of Carlisle, Robinson was apparently a servant at Queen’s College, Oxford for three years before he matriculated in 1571. Queen’s had longstanding links with the north-west of England, but the future bishop was also a protégé of another Cumberland native, the college’s visitor, Edmund Grindal^†, archbishop of York. Robinson was subsequently elected a fellow, and, in 1576, principal of the neighbouring St Edmund Hall, which lay in the gift of the fellows of Queen’s. He also became one of Grindal’s chaplains, probably shortly after the latter’s translation to Canterbury in 1576, acquiring a string of livings in Essex and Kent.17 Al. Ox.; Ath. Ox. ii. 857; CCEd; Queen’s, Oxf. Reg. H, p. 31.

In May 1581, Robinson, then senior fellow, was elected provost of Queen’s. His funeral monument stated that he found the college destroyed, and rebuilt it; he certainly wrought considerable changes. One of his first acts as provost was to waive his right to the entry fines and other perquisites claimed by his predecessors. He also secured a licence of mortmain for the college estates, and a statute confirming the incorporation of the college. His overhaul of its finances provided the revenue to repair and augment college properties, to undertake building works on the main site, and to found lectureships in Greek and rhetoric. With the encouragement of both Grindal and Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham^‡, Robinson cemented the college’s reputation as a bastion of Calvinist orthodoxy, while maintaining its historic links with the north-west.18 J.R. Magrath, The Queen’s Coll. i. 210-16; R.H. Hodgkin, Six Centuries of an Oxf. Coll. 79-82.

After Grindal’s death in 1583, Robinson remained faithful to his memory, personally handling the endowment of the archbishop’s school at St Bees, Cumberland. However, his immersion in college affairs masks the fact that his career languished for the next 15 years. This was not the intention of Grindal, who had bequeathed Robinson and two other chaplains the next vacancies of the rectory of Wonston, Hampshire, and prebends at Lichfield and St Davids cathedrals; it was simply that none of these preferments fell vacant.19 Queen’s, Oxf. G.8b; Strype, 602-3. For Wonston, see CCEd. Moreover, Robinson had surrendered his existing livings on taking up the provost-ship of Queen’s. He may have been the ‘Dr Robinson’ who was nominated to the rectory of Great Haseley, Oxfordshire in 1597, but if so his application was unsuccessful. Either way, he had no cure of souls when he was appointed bishop of Carlisle in July 1598.20 HMC Hatfield, vii. 546; Windsor Chapter Acts 1430, 1523-1672 ed. S. Bond, 30. Dr Robinson could have been John Robinson, archdeacon of Bedford, see Al. Cant.

Valued at £478 p.a., the bishopric undoubtedly increased Robinson’s income. However, he held no benefices in commendam, and therefore had nothing to live on while paying his first fruits. This explains why, immediately after his consecration, he asked Secretary of State Sir Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury) for the grant of his episcopal revenues to be backdated to his predecessor’s death. He apparently also hoped to be allowed to retain his provost-ship, but discovered that Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, had been promised the nomination of his successor by the queen. He went on a charm offensive, presenting bibles to both Cecil and Essex, and was allowed to delay his resignation until March 1599, shortly after Essex’s departure for Ireland, whereupon the college elected the senior fellow, Henry Airay.21 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. (1913-15), vi. 56; HMC Hatfield, viii. 277, 405, 446, 521; xix. 13; Queen’s, Oxf. 2T.55; Magrath, i. 223.

As a diocesan, Robinson lived up to the Calvinist ideal of a godly pastor. He strove to improve the standard of his clergy, leading the way by his own regular preaching, by thoughtful ministration to the bereaved, and confirmations.22 K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 86, 88, 125, 253; Carlisle Archive Cent., D/LONS/L3/1/8/5. In 1607 he chastised his clergy for neglecting their weekly catechism classes, while his only surviving visitation articles (1612), based on those formulated by Tobie Matthew^*, archbishop of York for the metropolitical visitation of 1607, asked how often the minister preached and catechised.23 Fincham, 206, 256-7; Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church I ed. K. Fincham (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. i), 55-63. He also persuaded a string of Queen’s graduates to take up positions in his diocese, including his brother Giles Robinson, and Barnard Robinson, presumably also a kinsman.24 Fincham, 195. For Bernard and Giles Robinson, see Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, xi. 18, 25; CCEd; SP12/281/27. As at Queen’s, Robinson strove to improve the yields of the episcopal estates, particularly his best property, the manor of Horncastle, Lincolnshire, where his tenant Sir Edward Dymoke^‡ was vexed by the rival claims of Henry Clinton^*, 2nd earl of Lincoln. This was, of course, in his own best interests, as when Dymoke’s lease expired in 1612, he resumed the manor into his own hands.25 Queen’s, Oxf. G.15, 4G.55, 4L.6; HMC Hatfield, xi. 303-4; xii. 410-12; Carlisle Archive Cent., D&C1/1/4, pp. 85-90, 212-17, 245-8, 362-5. However, he was not merely looking to feather his own nest: in 1606 he secured a national collection for the reconstruction of the derelict church at Arthuret, on the Scottish border, and he later persuaded the crown to allocate timber stocks towards this project.26 Registrum Vagum of Anthony Harison ed. T.F. Barton (Norf. Rec. Soc. xxxiii), 217-19; Vis. Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church I, 97; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 67.

Robinson’s efficiency and local knowledge recommended him for an area which was particularly volatile in the final years of Elizabeth’s reign, but in March 1603, only days after the queen’s death, he watched, powerless, from the ramparts of Carlisle Castle as the Graham clan ran amok along the borders, causing £10,000 of damage in a rampage called the ‘busy week’.27 Whitehaven Archive Cent. D/PEN/216, f. 125r-v; HMC Hatfield, xv. 237; S.J. Watts and S.J. Watts, From Border to Middle Shire, 135-6. At the beginning of the following year, he was one of the bishops invited to attend the Hampton Court Conference, at which the future of the Church was debated before King James. The London preacher Stephen Egerton expressed the hope that Robinson was one of several bishops who had ‘turned puritans’, but his only recorded contribution to its debates was to affirm the assertion of Richard Bancroft^*, bishop of London (later archbishop of Canterbury), that the rite of confirmation dated to apostolic times.28 Sloane 271, f. 23v; W. Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference (1604), 10-12.

Robinson attended almost every sitting of the Lords in the 1604 session of Parliament, during which ecclesiastical reform remained on the political agenda. He was one of the delegation ordered to confer with the Commons about their proposals for radical reform on 19 Apr. 1604, but the meeting was repeatedly delayed, while the bishops chose to stand their ground over the new Canons passed by the Canterbury Convocation, of which Robinson was not a member.29 LJ, ii. 282b; RICHARD BANCROFT. He was, however, included on Lords’ committees appointed to scrutinize several other items of ecclesiastical legislation: against witchcraft, blasphemy and the import of ‘popish, vain and lascivious books’; two drafts of the recusancy bill; and another to bar married dons from bring their families to live with them at university.30 LJ, ii. 275a, 290a, 301b, 313b, 324b, 332a, 340a. Robinson’s post on the borders meant that he was co-opted into the debates over James’s project for Union with Scotland. He was among those ordered to attend conferences to consider the king’s initial proposals, and was also named to attend a conference on 30 May, at which MPs complained that their proceedings had been criticized in a tract by John Thornborough^*, bishop of Bristol.31 Ibid. 277b, 284a, 309a. Robinson was also included on committees for three bills of northern interest: the repair of two Yorkshire harbours, and confirmation of the charter of Berwick-upon-Tweed.32 Ibid. 281a, 286a, 309a.

During the winter of 1604-5, the king ordered a crackdown on nonconformist clergy, an order Robinson was presumably reluctant to enforce, as none are known to have been deprived in his diocese. He attended the Lords on all but one day of the parliamentary session of 1605-6, when he was included on three committees to discuss proceedings against the Gunpowder plotters and ordered to attend a conference with the Commons on fresh recusancy legislation. The latter resulted in the drafting of two bills, which he was appointed to help consider in committee. He was also appointed to discuss bills to impose the new oath of allegiance on those travelling overseas, and to the committee for the revived bill to prevent the import of popish books.33 Ibid. 363a, 367b, 370a, 380b, 401a, 419b, 427a. During the same session, godly MPs insisted on revisiting the question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, seeking loopholes whereby they might overturn the deprivations of the preceding year. Robinson was one of those required to attend the conference at which the Commons laid out their ecclesiastical grievances on 8 Apr., and during the preparations for a further conference, he, John Still^*, bishop of Bath and Wells and Martin Heton^*, bishop of Ely were ordered to handle MPs’ complaints about citations issued by ecclesiastical courts. This issue was eventually discussed on 5 May, but it was Still, not Robinson, who reported the debate to the Lords.34 Ibid. 411a, 416b, 428a; RICHARD BANCROFT. Robinson was included on the committee for the Commons’ bill to abolish purveyance without compensation, and five days later he was ordered to attend the conference at which Bancroft, now archbishop of Canterbury, informed MPs that this measure had been rejected by the Lords.35 LJ, ii. 407b, 413a; Bowyer Diary, 116-17. Robinson was named to committees for two bills relating to Oxford interests: one for the estates of Corpus Christi College, and another for the improvement of the Thames navigation below Oxford. He was also required to help consider the bill to confirm Archbishop Grindal’s endowment of St Bees school.36 LJ, ii. 371b, 374a, 388a.

Although the parliamentary session of 1606-7 was dominated by the question of the Union, Robinson remained in the north-west, assigning his proxy to Archbishop Matthew. In advance of the session, he pleaded with Salisbury that ‘the exceeding charge of three parliaments, besides the [Hampton Court] Conference, has brought me so low … I am neither able to discharge the duty of my place nor my credit with the world’. However, a further reason for his absence, as Francis Clifford^*, 4th earl of Cumberland observed, was that his services were needed in the north-west.37 Ibid. 449a; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 292-3, 308, 330.

Although the cross-border commission appointed in March 1605 had been composed entirely of laymen, Robinson was one of its members by December, when he wrote to Sir Wilfrid Lawson^‡ about gaol deliveries in the north. On his return to Carlisle in June 1606 he set about implementing the king’s plan for forcible resettlement of the troublesome Graham clan. Those who were of military age would be sent to the Cautionary Towns in the Low Countries, while the rest would be sent to co. Roscommon in Ireland. The proposed Irish plantation included numerous incentives: free transportation, £20 per household, plus land and provisions; there was also the threat of prosecution for those who declined these offers, and execution for those who returned without permission. The first group left for Ireland in August 1606, but it took until the spring of 1607 to round up the more obdurate.38 C66/1657 (dorse); Whitehaven Archive Cent. D/PEN/216, ff. 55, 125-6v, 142-3, 146-7, 151v, 157-8v, 160v-1, 166, 172, 179, 181; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 191-2, 215-16, 224-5, 289-90, 293-5, 342-3; xix. 6, 29-30, 100-2, 176; Watts and Watts, 142. Robinson also dealt with other routine instances of banditry, including the robbery of the crown’s deputy receiver in the north-west.39 Whitehaven Archive Cent., D/PEN/216, ff. 169v-70; HMC Hatfield, xix. 29-30, 77.

Robinson was ambitious to further his own career: in 1602 he had lobbied for the bishopric of Hereford, vacated by the death of Herbert Westfaling^†; and in September 1606, protests to Salisbury about his ‘decayed estate’ prefaced a plea for ‘a place of a little better maintenance’.40 HMC Hatfield, xii. 78, 478; xviii. 292-3. In April 1607, learning of the death of Richard Vaughan^*, bishop of London, he sought ‘a place of better maintenance’ in the round of preferments sure to follow, but London went to Thomas Ravis^*, whose bishopric of Gloucester can have had little appeal for Robinson, being worth less than his own see. In the following year, he sought remuneration for his work as a border commissioner – the lay commissioners received 100 marks a year – and in 1610 it was presumably as a reward for this service that he was granted a dispensation to hold the rectory of Greystoke, Cumberland in commendam with his bishopric.41 Ibid. xix. 87; xx. 190; Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. vi. 56; SP14/36/36; CCEd.

Robinson returned to Parliament in the spring of 1610, attending almost every day of the session. The agenda was dominated by Salisbury’s ambitious programme for fiscal reform: Robinson was one of the large delegation ordered to attend the conference at which the initial proposals were outlined, while on 18 Apr. he was one of those sent to ask the king whether he would be prepared to allow the Commons to buy out wardship. On 26 May, he accompanied Archbishop Matthew to put the Commons’ latest offer to the king, but he played no recorded part in the later stages of the negotiations.42 LJ, ii. 550b, 579b, 603a. Puritan MPs continued to promote bills intended to provoke the bishops, who ensured that they were vetoed in the Lords. Robinson was named to the committees for three such bills, all of which vanished without trace: that to discourage non-residence and pluralism among clergymen; the bill to void the disciplinary provisions of the 1604 Canons; and another to bring scandalous ministers under the jurisdiction of the common law courts. He was also included on the committee for the blasphemy bill, which was approved in principle, but rejected as unworkable. He was named to committees for two bills which responded to the papal ban on Catholics taking the oath of allegiance: that to require all who sought restitution in blood to take communion, and swear the oaths of supremacy and allegiance; and another to impose the oath of allegiance on all over the age of 16.43 Ibid. 587a, 606b, 611a, 629a, 637b, 641b, 645a. He was naturally included on the committee for the bill to regulate the remanding of felons across the Anglo-Scottish border, and the delegation sent to discuss the proposed amendments to this bill with MPs.44 Ibid. 619a, 634b; Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 123. He made a single recorded speech during the session, warning that, for all its benefits, the estate bill for the Kentish landowner Sir Henry Crispe ‘layeth great faults against the wife, and imputations against persons of account in the place where they live’, which might provoke trouble in future; he was included on the bill committee.45 Procs. 1610, i. 228-9; LJ, ii. 586b.

Robinson did not return to Parliament in the autumn of 1610, but assigned his proxy to Archbishop Bancroft, and then, after the latter’s death, to Archbishop Matthew and George Lloyd^*, bishop of Chester. Nor did he appear in 1614, when be bestowed his proxy on the new archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot^*. He made little impact on public affairs in the final years of his life, except as a vigorous defender of the interests of St Bees school.46 LJ, ii. 666a, 686a; Queen’s, Oxf., G.19. This was apparently due to failing health, of which he complained in his will on 9 May 1616. Following a vigorous statement of his ‘assured hope’ of salvation, he bequeathed £300 to the scholars of Queen’s, and some silver plate to the fellows. His successor at Carlisle was to have his Parliament robes – he had been unable to find any for sale or hire when he first attended at Westminster in 1601 – various household stuff at his bishop’s palace, Rose Castle, and £50 to cover any claims for dilapidations. He left smaller legacies to a long list of relatives, a selection of books to various friends, 40s. apiece to the fellows of Queen’s, and his Convocation robes to Provost Airay.47 HMC Hatfield, xi. 456; Borthwick, Reg. 31, ff. 191-2. He died on 19 June, and was buried at Carlisle Cathedral. Queen’s College held a memorial service in his honour, and an elaborate brass was erected in his memory at both locations. His kinsman Bernard Robinson registered his will at York, although the details of probate are not recorded.48 MI at Queen’s, Oxf.; Magrath, i. 224; Borthwick, Reg. 31, f. 192.