SNOWDEN, Robert (c.1564-1621)

Son of a Nottinghamshire yeoman, Snowden, with his elder brother Richard, was admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge as a sizar – a servant to wealthier students. Between 1594 and 1596 Snowden, then a college fellow, probably served as tutor to Francis^* and George Manners^* (later 6th and 7th earls of Rutland respectively), as their elder brother Roger^*, the 5th earl, nominated Snowden to his first living, at Harby, Leicestershire. The Manners family presumably also secured his other early preferments: in 1598 he acquired a second living at Hickling, Nottinghamshire, where his patron, William Fairbarne, may have been related to a servant of John Manners^†, 4th earl of Rutland; and in the following year Snowden was collated to the prebendal stall at Southwell Minster, Nottinghamshire vacated by Humphrey Tyndall, master of Queens’ College, Cambridge and a kinsman of Earl Roger.18 Biog. Reg. Christ’s Coll. i. 132, 159; FRANCIS MANNERS; CCEd; Al. Cant.; Le Neve, Fasti (1854), iii. 424.

In 1599 Snowden resigned his fellowship at Christ’s, presumably in order to marry: his first son, Rutland (Earl Roger was presumably the godfather) was baptized at Southwell in 1600.19 Oxford DNB, li. 489. Snowden might well have remained at Southwell but for a sermon preached during the royal progress through Nottinghamshire in August 1612. The invitation was presumably arranged by Sir John Holles^* (later 1st earl of Clare), a Nottinghamshire contemporary of his at Christ’s College, whom he had assisted the previous year in a fruitless search of Rufford Abbey for Catholic priests and paraphernalia. Taking his text from the new Authorized Version of the bible, Snowden offered a lengthy invective against the papacy:

he [the pope] doth separate kings from their kingdoms by his bulls of papal excommunication, he doth separate subjects from their sovereigns by his secret reconcilers, he doth separate the people from their pastors by his breves of recusancy, he doth separate wives from their husbands by his auricular confessors … he doth separate men’s words from their thoughts by his mental reservations and equivocations …

He also attacked the Arminian theologian Conradus Vorstius, whose appointment to the divinity chair at Leiden was being blocked by King James, and commended church courts: ‘the ecclesiastical law is the king’s law … and he that loves it not, loves not the king nor the Church, nor God nor himself’.20 HMC Portland, ix. 23-4, 48; Royal 17/B/xxv, ff. 2v, 12, 16v; F. Shriver, ‘Orthodoxy and Diplomacy: Jas. I and the Vorstius Affair’, EHR, cxvii. 449-74. Richard Neile^*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (later archbishop of York) and clerk of the Closet, was sent to obtain a copy of the text, which Snowden penned from memory and delivered to King James at Woodstock Palace, Oxfordshire. He was promptly sworn as chaplain to Prince Henry, and after the prince’s death in November, Neile and James Montagu^*, dean of the Chapel Royal and bishop of Bath and Wells, had him appointed one of the king’s chaplains.21 Lincs. Archives, DIOC/LT&D/1612 (Rudd to Turner, 18 Sept. 1612); HMC Portland, ix. 23-4; Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. rec. ser. xxxi), 44.

Further preferment eluded Snowden for several years. Holles recommended him for the deanery of Lincoln in 1613, but Sir John had fallen from favour after Prince Henry’s death, and the post went to one of the cathedral prebends, Roger Parker.22 HMC Portland, ix. 23-4; Holles Letters, 44; Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, ix. 7. This setback may explain why Snowden was reluctant to contribute much to the benevolence collected after the dissolution of the 1614 Parliament: Neile (then his diocesan as bishop of Lincoln) chided him for having ‘written so much and given so little’.23 Fincham, 108. Against all the odds, Snowden secured the bishopric of Carlisle in the autumn of 1616, overcoming George Carleton^* (later bishop of Llandaff and Chichester), who was backed by Prince Charles (Stuart^*, prince of Wales). Snowden triumphed with support from the king’s new favourite George Villiers^*, earl (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, who challenged the prince in one of his first forays into ecclesiastical patronage.24 British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618-19) ed. A. Milton (C. of E. Rec. Soc. xiii), 56-7; Chamberlain Letters, ii.29-30, 48; SP14/89/35. Dismissed by one of Carleton’s friends as ‘obscure’ and ‘unworthy’, Snowden presumably paid handsomely for this promotion. Lewes Bayly^* was reputed to have given Buckingham £600 for the bishopric of Bangor, worth only £120 a year, so it seems likely that Snowden paid a considerably larger sum for Carlisle, worth four times as much.25 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. vi. 56; SP16/164/23; LEWES BAYLY. He was subsequently allowed to retain the rectory of Hickling for a year, presumably to assist in the payment of his first fruits. Thereafter his rigorous management of the diocesan estates suggests a pressing need to pay off his debt to Buckingham.

The surviving evidence paints Snowden as an energetic administrator. Not only did he conduct his primary visitation in person in 1617, he also conducted a survey of the diocesan estates, discovering (according to his wife) an ‘abundance of concealments, improvements and altered tenures’, which promised substantial increases to his rent-roll.26 Fincham, 320; Bodl., Tanner 74, f. 184; J. Wilson, Rose Castle, 168-70; C.M. Lowther Bouch, ‘Lowthers of Rose Causey’, Trans. Westmld. and Cumb. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxxix. 133. In 1620 he appealed to Buckingham to ensure the strict execution of justice against some criminals who had committed a murder just outside the gates of Carlisle.27 Fortescue Pprs. ed. S.R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. n.s. i), 124-5. Like most bishops, Snowden shared the benefits of office with his own family: his brother was collated as a prebend of Carlisle Cathedral in 1617; while his eldest son and servants received several leases of tithes in Cumberland. In 1619, when the manor and rectory of Horncastle, Lincolnshire – the most lucrative of the episcopal estates – came up for lease, he granted his servant Easter Snowden a 21 year lease, for the ancient rent of £92 10s. His predecessor, Bishop Henry Robinson^*, had done much the same on several occasions, but none of these leases had been held for more than a few years, whereas Snowden’s family retained possession of the manor for over 40 years.28 Carlisle Archive Cent. D&C1/1/4, pp. 451-4, 510-16; D&C1/1/5, pp. 55-61, 171-2, 179-84.

Despite ill health, Snowden arrived at Westminster promptly for the start of the parliamentary session on 30 Jan. 1621, and attended regularly until sickness forced him seek a licence for absence on 19 May, when he granted his proxy to John Thornborough^*, bishop of Worcester. He left little trace on the Lords’ debates. On 10 Feb. he took the oath of allegiance, along with many others, and was subsequently included on three bill committees: to restrict the export of bullion; to allow Esmé Stuart^*, earl of March, to sell the manor of Temple Newsam, Yorkshire to Sir Arthur Ingram^‡; and to punish drunkenness. He died sometime during the second half of May, having last attended the Lords on 18 May. His widow Abigail secured administration of his estate on 1 June.29 LJ, iii. 15a, 26b, 107b, 127a; Chamberlain Letters, 379.

Snowden probably died heavily in debt, thanks to the burden of first fruits, a large gratuity to Buckingham and the maintenance of an episcopal household. In 1622 his widow appealed to Lord Treasurer Lionel Cranfield^*, 1st earl of Middlesex, to assign some of the first fruits payable by the new bishop, Richard Milbourne^*, for settlement of her debts. She also determined to hold on to the Horncastle estate, a decision which caused a protracted controversy. In July 1621 she wrote to Milbourne refuting complaints about her husband’s estate management: ‘I doubt not but I have undeserved enemies who have no other reason to hate me but that they will’. She excused her husband’s leases of tithe revenue to their eldest son, on the grounds of, ‘our expense in coming to the bishopric … the charge we have been at in repairs, the smallness of the revenues of the bishopric, especially in the time of first fruits, and lastly our short continuance in the same’, and protested that the £300 of timber felled on the estate had been used for repairs.30 Lowther Bouch, 133-4; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent., U269/1/OE1528.

In September 1623, with the backing of the northern magnate Lord William Howard, Abigail persuaded Milbourne to assign her a lease of the major part of the Horncastle estate for £107 p.a. without payment of an entry fine. The term was to run not merely for 21 years, but for the lives of her sons Rutland and Scroope Snowden, and their cousin George Snowden. This arrangement ultimately caused Milbourne immense financial loss, and led his successor, Barnaby Potter^†, to claim that the 1623 lease had been procured from Milbourne ‘when he was non compos mentis’, a charge he was unable to corroborate. Widow Snowden persuaded King Charles to refer the cause to arbitration, as a result of which her title was upheld, suggesting that her pleas of poverty were taken seriously. She died in possession of Horncastle in 1651, when the lease passed to Rutland Snowden.31 Carlisle Archive Cent. D&C1/1/5, pp. 354-64; C2/Chas.I/C78/48; PROB 11/222, ff. 64v-5v; C6/121/122.