WILLIAMS, John (1582-1650)

The first cleric to hold the great seal since Nicholas Heath^†, archbishop of York, who served as lord chancellor between 1556 and 1558, John Williams was also an academic, who adapted to the court environment better than other scholars, such as Sir Robert Naunton^‡ or George Abbot^*, archbishop of Canterbury. He is chiefly known through two sources: the effusive biography written by his erstwhile chaplain, John Hacket^† (post-Restoration bishop of Coventry and Lichfield) between 1654 and 1658;48 The text frequently cites Cabala (1654), and notes that it was completed on 17 Feb. 1658, see Hacket, ii. 229. and the criticisms of one of his most inveterate opponents, William Laud^*, archbishop of Canterbury. However, the survival of some of his own papers, together with gossip relayed to Wales by his staff, and the record of his parliamentary speeches, permits a more balanced interpretation of his career.49 See particularly Hacket, i. 197-8.

Origins and early career, 1598-1620

The Williams family claimed descent from Ednyfed Vychan, one of the chieftains of pre-Conquest Gwynedd, whose descendants inherited Penrhyn, in eastern Caernarvonshire. By 1600 the senior branches had fallen on hard times, selling many of their estates over the next generation; Penrhyn and Cochwillan were acquired by Williams himself.50 Griffith, 184-6; Hacket, i. 5-6.

The future archbishop was educated at Ruthin grammar school, Denbighshire, where he attracted the attention of Richard Vaughan^*, bishop of Bangor (1596-7), in whose diocese the school lay. Vaughan recommended Williams to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was admitted in 1598. There he was tutored by Owen Gwyn, who was related to Williams’ other Welsh patron, Sir John Wynn^‡ of Gwydir, Caernarvonshire. As his own family only provided him with an income of £7 p.a., Williams was suitably grateful for an annual stipend of £8 from Wynn, and returned the favour by taking care of the latter’s sons Robert and William Wynn^‡ during their time at St John’s. In 1603 Williams was elected a fellow, apparently King James’s first nominee to a Cambridge college. Two years later he proceeded MA, whereupon Gwyn resigned the rectory of Honington, Suffolk in favour of his erstwhile pupil, who was presently ordained priest at Fulham Palace by Vaughan, now bishop of London.51 Hacket, i. 8-10, 19; P. Yorke, Royal Tribes of Wales, 143-4, 150; St John’s Coll., Camb., D94.126; CCEd.; Bodl. Tanner 179, unfol.; W.P. Griffith, Learning, Law and Religion, 223.

Although Vaughan’s death in March 1607 dampened his prospects, Williams continued to enjoy the patronage of the aged John Lumley^*, Lord Lumley, a relative by marriage, for the next few years. He also engrossed himself in studying divinity, mathematics, music, French, Greek and Hebrew, and spent time learning rhetorical style from the anti-Calvinist John Overall^*, then regius professor of divinity at Cambridge and dean of St Paul’s (later bishop of Norwich).52 Hacket, i. 9-11. While employed as a lobbyist by his college, he met not only King James, but also Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (Thomas Egerton^*, later 1st Viscount Brackley), Richard Bancroft^*, archbishop of Canterbury, and the lord treasurer, Robert Cecil^*, 1st earl of Salisbury, who was also the university’s chancellor. Williams so impressed Ellesmere that in May 1611 the latter instituted him as rector of Grafton Underwood, Northamptonshire, and offered him a position as his domestic chaplain. However, Williams delayed taking up this post for a year, as he was then serving as the university’s junior proctor. During this time he preached at Newmarket before James and Prince Henry. His sermon, he boasted, attracted ‘a great deal of court holy water, if I can make myself any good thereby’.53 Ibid. 17-20; CCEd; Bodl., Tanner 179, unfol.; NLW, 9054E/575; P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Ct. (suppl. cal. 169). Hacket i. 19 misplaces this sermon at Royston.

Williams’ proctorship proved more eventful than most. Commended for the hospitality he showed during visits by the brother of the duke of Württemburg and the Spanish ambassador, he also made enemies with his forays into academic politics.54 Hacket, i. 20-1; Ath. Ox. i. 803. When the mastership of St John’s fell vacant in May 1612, he successfully canvassed the other fellows in favour of his former tutor Owen Gwyn, overcoming other, well-connected rivals such as Valentine Carey^*, master of Christ’s College (subsequently bishop of Exeter) and Thomas Morton^*, dean of Winchester (later bishop of Durham).55 Hacket, i. 22-3; Yorke, 148. A few weeks later, Williams again became embroiled in university politics as a result of the death of Salisbury, which precipitated an election for the chancellorship. According to Williams’ own contemporary account, the heads of house, aiming at their own preferment, nominated Archbishop Abbot. However Williams persuaded the masters of arts to elect instead the leader of the rival pro-Spanish faction at court, Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton. When the king wrote to ask why his own nomination of Prince Charles (Stuart^*, later prince of Wales) had been ignored, the vice chancellor, Barnaby Gooch^‡, a ‘serving-man lawyer’, sent Williams to court to explain the result he had engineered. Throwing himself on the king’s mercy, Williams invited James to nominate whomsoever he pleased as chancellor, whereupon the king, blaming the conveniently anonymous activities of ‘some of rash, factious humour’, waived his son’s claim and allowed Northampton to be re-elected.56 Yorke, 147-8; Hacket, i. 21-2; Camb. Univ. Trans. ed. J. Heywood and T. Wright, ii. 238-49. Gooch, who had presumably dispatched him in order to see him discredited, then had Williams summoned before the university senate with the intention of having him incarcerated on some trumped-up charge. However, Williams stayed away and appealed to Northampton, who exonerated him.57 Yorke, 148. Williams again landed in trouble in September 1612, when, acting once more under Gooch’s instructions, he enforced the university’s jurisdiction over vagrants in the village of Chesterton, just outside Cambridge, to the annoyance of the local magistrates. However, his actions were vindicated by the Privy Council.58 C.H. Cooper, Annals of Camb. iii. 54-5; CUL, CUA, U.Ac.2(1), ff. 220, 222.

Williams left Cambridge to become one of Ellesmere’s chaplains as soon as his proctorial year was ended. However, he returned briefly in the spring of 1613 to take his BD and participate in a disputation held before Prince Charles and the Elector Palatine on the eve of the latter’s marriage to Princess Elizabeth.59 Hacket, i. 24-6; Cooper, iii. 56-7; The Eagle, xvi. 231-2. According to Hacket, Williams was never merely Ellesmere’s chaplain, as he deciphered the academic politics behind the correspondence Ellesmere received as chancellor of Oxford University, leading John King^*, bishop of London, to quip that Williams was the university’s real chancellor. Moreover, with the assistance of Sir John Walter^‡, Williams also acquired a basic grounding in the law, and discussed judgements in Chancery and Star Chamber with his master, all of which was to serve him well later in his career.60 Hacket, i. 27-9, who mis-cites ‘Sir John Walker’.

While in Ellesmere’s service, Williams benefited personally from the lord chancellor’s oversight of much of the crown’s ecclesiastical patronage. Although his appointment as archdeacon of Carmarthen in 1613 apparently derived from a reversion granted to him by the late Archbishop Bancroft,61 Ibid. i. 17 wrongly assumes that Williams was granted the archdeaconry of Cardigan. many of his other preferments can be traced to Ellesmere, such as his prebends at Hereford and Lincoln cathedrals and the rectory of Bangor Monachorum, Flintshire, worth almost £300 p.a.62 Fasti, ix. 24, 43, 76; xiii. 82; Bodl., Tanner 179, unfol. For Bangor’s annual revenues, see JOHN BRIDGEMAN. Ellesmere may also have had a hand in Williams’ appointment as rector of Walgrave, Northamptonshire – although his patron was formally listed as Richard Neile^*, then clerk of the closet and bishop of Lincoln63 CCEd; Hacket, i. 29. – and in his acquisition of two sinecures in Bangor diocese, although the official patron of one of these livings was the Caernarvonshire lawyer William Jones^‡, Williams’ cousin by marriage.64 CCEd; Dioc. of Bangor in the Sixteenth Century ed. A.I. Pryce, 37; Griffith, 186, 191, 236; Hacket, i. 30. However, Williams secured a prebend at Peterborough Cathedral by arrangement with John Bridgeman^* (later bishop of Chester), whose father and father-in-law were named as the patrons.65 Fasti, viii. 125; JOHN BRIDGEMAN.

Ellesmere’s retirement and death in 1617 left Williams in search of a fresh patron. He declined a place under his master’s successor, Sir Francis Bacon^* (later Viscount St. Alban), having perhaps already been offered a royal chaplaincy by James Montagu^*, bishop of Winchester and dean of the Chapel Royal. According to Hacket, the king planned to take his new chaplain on his progress to Scotland that summer. However, Williams returned to Cambridge, where he obtained his doctorate and hosted the Italian Marc’Antonio de Dominis, archbishop of Spalato (who had recently sought refuge in England) at an academic disputation. Williams then retired to his livings in Northamptonshire. In 1618, a foray into local politics in defence of the royal Book of Sports fell foul of the local puritans, who frowned upon Williams’ encouragement of a ‘bacchanalia’ (presumably a church-ale) at Grafton Underwood. The confrontation was provoked by Sir Edward Montagu^* (later 1st Lord Montagu), who complained about Williams only days after death of his brother, Bishop Montagu, although without success.66 Hacket, i. 31-4; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 207-12, 214; E. Cope, Life of a Public Man, 78-9.

Although Hacket claimed Williams passed his time preaching and studying in his rural retreat, a royal chaplaincy allowed him access to court. As a result, he was appointed dean of Salisbury Cathedral in the autumn of 1619, retaining all his other livings except for Honington. This promotion evidently owed nothing to the new royal favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, whose orbit Williams had so far not entered. However, early in 1620 Williams was given an opportunity to curry favour with Buckingham after he was instructed by the king to persuade Francis Manners^*, 6th earl of Rutland to permit a marriage between Buckingham and his daughter Katherine. Williams was also required to persuade the bride – raised a Catholic – to conform to the Church of England. The king allowed Williams to proceed with the ceremony in May 1620, once the bride had agreed to take instruction in the Protestant faith. In the following November Katherine received several copies of a religious primer written by Williams, which included prayers for daily recitation, an exposition of the Church of England’s theological position, and a refutation of Catholic doctrine.67 Hacket, i. 38-43; Three Small and Plaine Treatises [1620]. The authorship was ascribed to ‘an old prebendary of Lincoln’.

In the midst of his negotiations with the favourite’s bride, a sermon preached by Williams in the Chapel Royal in Lent 1620 (against excess of apparel) was published by royal command. In July, shortly after Buckingham’s marriage, Williams was appointed dean of Westminster, which office was in the favourite’s gift as steward of Westminster liberty.68 Hacket, i. 33-6; Fasti, vi. 6; P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Ct. (suppl. cal. 238); J. Williams, A Sermon of Apparrell (1620); Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 206. James had previously promised this prestigious living to another of his chaplains, John Bowle^* (later bishop of Rochester), but the latter was consoled with the deanery of Salisbury and a private understanding that Williams would recommend him for Westminster when he vacated the post.69 Fortescue Pprs. ed. S.R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. n.s. i), 128, 158; Hacket, i. 36. Once again, Williams was permitted to retain almost all his existing preferments, surrendering only one of his Welsh livings.

Keepership and Parliament, 1621

The summons of a Parliament in November 1620 gave Williams another opportunity to entrench himself in Buckingham’s favour, by making arrangements for the return of the latter’s half-brother, Sir Edward Villiers^‡, as burgess for the borough of Westminster, where the favourite was high steward. Before Parliament met the borough’s other newly elected MP died, whereupon Williams held a fresh election (without securing a new writ) in order to return William Man^‡, a vestryman of St Margaret’s, who was opposed by Edward Forsett^‡, a j.p. from St Martin-in-the-Fields. Although some of the electors subsequently complained to the Commons against Williams’ manipulation of the electoral process, Man was confirmed in his seat.70 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 266-8; J.F. Merritt, Soc. World of Early Modern Westminster, 81-6. Meanwhile, in North Wales, Williams assisted Sir John Wynn in his attempt to have his heir Sir Richard^‡ returned as knight for Caernarvonshire, against strong opposition. The rival candidates, who had been quarrelling in London, were pacified by Williams, but the dean’s advice that Wynn should pay to obtain the support of Lord Chancellor St. Alban and the president of the council in the Marches (William Compton^*, 1st earl of Northampton) was apparently ignored by Sir John Wynn. Facing a humiliating defeat because of his own unpopularity among the local gentry, Wynn withdrew his son’s candidacy shortly before the hustings.71 NLW, 9057E/926; HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 552-5.

When the Parliament convened at the end of January, it was widely expected that proceedings would be instituted against various monopolists for abuse of their patents. However, the early indictment of the favourite’s kinsman by marriage Sir Giles Mompesson^‡, the beneficiary of three lucrative patents, was perhaps a surprise, particularly as one of the partners in his monopoly of the manufacture of gold and silver thread was Sir Edward Villiers. Williams, consulted by Buckingham about what to do, advised the favourite to ‘swim with the tide’, and to let his friends, such as Williams himself, clear him from hostile gossip. He also recommended that Villiers be dispatched on embassy to Germany and that Mompesson be left to face justice. This judicious advice was heeded, as was his suggestion that 40 odious patents should be revoked by proclamation over the summer recess, ‘that the world may see that the king … is ready to play the pump to eject such filth as grew noisome in the nostrils of his people’.72 Hacket, i. 49-50; Stuart Royal Proclamations I ed. J.F. Larkin and P.L. Hughes, 511-19; R. Zaller, Parl. of 1621, pp. 64-5.

The deanery of Westminster gave Williams a permanent base adjacent to Whitehall Palace, which he retained until 1644, but this hardly quenched his thirst for further preferment. Having apparently been promised a reversion of the see of London by the king a year earlier, Williams reacted swiftly after the death of Bishop King on Good Friday 1621, urging Buckingham to recommend him for the vacancy. Though he protested that ‘I dare not be a suitor for so great a charge’, he had clearly given the matter ample thought, as he proceeded to outline to Buckingham the precise financial terms he was prepared to consider in return for a post reported to be burdened with considerable debts. The favourite reportedly backed his candidacy, but Prince Charles insisted on another candidate, presumably George Montaigne^*, bishop of Lincoln, whose own see was then awarded by way of consolation to Williams, whose congé d’élire was passed in July.73 Cabala (1654), 54-5; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 360; CSP Ven. 1621-3, 88; Add. 36445, f. 152; Hacket, i. 52.

Before Williams was formally nominated as bishop of Lincoln, a far greater prize appeared. At the beginning of May 1621, Lord Chancellor St. Alban was dismissed for corruption. Early contenders for the vacancy included the two chief justices, Sir James Ley^* (later 1st earl of Marlborough) and Sir Henry Hobart^‡; Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel; and the master of the Wards, Sir Lionel Cranfield^* (later 1st earl of Middlesex). However, Williams demonstrated his credentials for the post by submitting a tract on the reform of Chancery to the king,74 G.W. Thomas, ‘Jas. I, Equity and Ld. Kpr. John Williams’, EHR, xci. 525-8. who asked him to draft a breviate of the customary perquisites of the office, with a view to their reduction. Hacket claimed that this report was intended to favour Buckingham’s nominee Cranfield, but James, having reputedly vowed not to choose another lawyer, selected Williams himself,75 Hacket, i. 51-2; NLW, 9057E/955. James’s views about Chancery are outlined in Thomas, 506-25. who was sworn a privy councillor on 18 June. However, a horrified Council persuaded the king to delay presenting Williams with the great seal, after allegedly complaining ‘that so mean a man as a dean should so suddenly leap over all their heads’. James retorted that the only alternative candidate he would consider for the post was Richard Neile, then bishop of Durham, a prospect which left the councillors aghast. Not surprisingly, therefore, James had his way, and Williams formally assumed office as lord keeper of the great seal four weeks later, on 10 July, as soon as his congé d’élire for Lincoln was passed (although he was granted the profits arising from his new post immediately).76 NLW, 9057E/960-2, 966; Add. 72299, f. 48; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 383.

On receiving the seals, Williams acknowledged that ‘I am no more than a mere probationer’. By this he meant that he was to serve for a limited term of three years (at his own request, Hacket later claimed). Moreover, if he proved inadequate to the task, it was agreed that he should be removed after 18 months, securing an archbishopric or the best bishopric then available as compensation. Given his lack of legal training, Williams was to be assisted in Chancery by at least two of the common law judges, and to have an experienced lawyer as master of the Rolls. He asked for the attorney general Sir Thomas Coventry^* (later 1st Lord Coventry) to fill the latter post, but in the event the incumbent, Sir Julius Caesar^‡ (trained in both civil and common law) was retained.77 Hacket, i. 61-2; CSP Ven. 1621-3, p. 88; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 387.

Williams’ staff soon learned that the new lord keeper would have no truck with nepotism, to the evident disappointment of Sir John Wynn, who had hoped to recruit Williams as a powerful ally in his quarrels with his Caernarvonshire neighbours. However, this did not prevent Williams from quashing the appointments of two of the Wynn family’s rivals to minor office.78 NLW, 9057E/966, 968, 971; Cabala (1654), 62. Williams surrendered most of his other ecclesiastical preferments in exchange for his bishopric, apart from his Lincoln prebend and his Northamptonshire rectory – the same exchange he had offered for London diocese some months earlier. Lincoln diocese was officially valued at £828 a year, rather less than London (worth just over £1,000 p.a.), which may explain why Williams was also allowed to retain the deanery of Westminster in commendam; this also relieved him of the need to secure a London residence. The arrangement over Westminster was presumably made at the last moment, as William Laud^*, then a contender for the deanery (and later archbishop of Canterbury), was compensated with the bishopric of St Davids (which Williams had hoped to secure for Owen Gwyn of St John’s, Cambridge).79 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. vi. 56; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 392; Add. 72275, f. 119v; Fortescue Pprs. 157-8; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 136-7.

Upon his appointment as lord keeper, Williams set out to create a favourable impression as a reconciler of factions. Shortly after Parliament rose for the summer, Buckingham’s most prominent critic, Henry Wriothesley^*, 3rd and 1st earl of Southampton, was confined to Williams’ Westminster lodgings. Williams, however, subsequently arranged a private meeting with the favourite and the king, at which Southampton, having been warned that obstinacy might imperil his royal pension of £3,000, opted to retire to his country estate in Hampshire, thereby absenting himself from the autumn sitting of Parliament.80 SP14/122/112; Zaller, 139-41; Hacket, i. 68-9; Cabala (1654), 57-8, 60-1; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 389-90; C. Russell, PEP, 122. Williams also intervened to secure the release of the lawyer and antiquarian John Selden^‡, who had provided the Lords with advice about the extent of their privileges and precedents for impeachment, and granted him the post of register of Westminster College, which Selden promptly sold for £400. Furthermore, Williams supported James’s decision to offer a general amnesty for political detainees, including Henry Percy^*, 3rd earl of Northumberland. However, he refused to countenance the petition of the Spanish ambassador, Count Gondomar, for the release of a recusant held in debtor’s prison, without a direct order from the king.81 Hacket, i. 69-70; Zaller, 139-40; Cabala (1654), 61-2.

Williams’ ambitions were, to all appearances, by now sated, but a glittering new opportunity fleetingly beckoned in late July, after Archbishop Abbot accidentally killed a gamekeeper. Where the king offered Abbot nothing but consolation, Williams, making his own mercenary calculation, wrote to Buckingham and offered to trade the keepership for the archbishopric: for James, he claimed, ‘to leave … a man of blood, primate and patriarch of all his churches, is a thing that sounds very harsh in the old councils and canons of the Church. The papists will not spare to descant upon one and the other’. Lest the favourite miss his point, a week later he also complained to Buckingham’s secretary John Packer^‡ about the poor endowments of both the diocese of Lincoln and the keepership, ‘very much dismembered’ since Bacon’s fall.82 Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. J.O. Halliwell, i. 201; Cabala (1654), 55-6 (repr. in P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicanus (1668), 87); Fortescue Pprs. 158-9. Abbot was suspended until a commission of divines and lawyers, including Williams and Lancelot Andrewes^*, bishop of Winchester (his chief rival as Abbot’s replacement) resolved whether the archbishop should be deprived, and Williams ratcheted up the pressure by declining to accept consecration at the archbishop’s hands. For a short while it was rumoured that Andrewes would be translated to Canterbury and that Williams would be removed to Winchester or London, but the commission was evenly divided over the central issue of whether Abbot could retain his office, with Andrewes for the archbishop, and Williams against. The king, given the casting vote, exonerated Abbot and restored him to the exercise of his office, thereby putting paid to William’s ambition of succeeding him. Nevertheless, Abbot delegated the consecration of Williams and other bishops-elect to a team of bishops.83 HMC Cowper, i. 113; Add. 72254, ff. 52, 57, 64; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, ii. 275-6; Cabala (1654), 12-13; LPL, ms 943, pp. 75-7; SP14/123/15, 107, 110; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 399-400, 406; Hacket, i. 65-8; Fortescue Pprs. 167; GEORGE ABBOT.

Over the summer of 1621 Williams made a ‘long and forcible oration’ to the London corporation on the need to increase the yield of the second subsidy voted by Parliament.84 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 395; Add. 72275, f. 119v. That October, he delayed the sealing of the pardon granted to the former lord chancellor in respect of the latter’s fine, fearing that it might become an issue in Parliament,85 Letters and Life of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, vii. 308-9; Cabala (1654), 60-1, 82-3. which reopened in November. Shortly before the session reconvened, the keeper reminded Buckingham that ‘the necessary absences of this session’ – the king had decamped to Newmarket, Suffolk – made it convenient that the power to dispense peers from attendance should be delegated, either to him or to Prince Charles.86 Fortescue Pprs. 166.

As lord keeper, Williams, despite being a newcomer to Parliament, was required to preside over the House of Lords from the woolsack. His duties were made more burdensome by the fact that the king’s absence left Williams to address both Houses on his behalf. This task he performed on 21 Nov., ‘very well and elegantly’, although he was obliged to maintain the polite fiction that James was absent through sickness. In this speech he cited the revocation of a large number of monopolies over the summer, and an undertaking to send a commission to investigate the Irish administration, as evidence of the king’s willingness to heed criticisms offered in the spring sitting. He then explained the reason for the hasty recall of the session: Spanish and imperial forces had recently invaded the territories of the king’s son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, and the king called on MPs to stand by their undertaking of 4 June 1621 to maintain the Palatine cause with their ‘lives and estates’. Williams reminded his audience that James had already contributed £40,000 to support the Protestant garrisons in the Palatinate, and urged them to vote supply before Christmas, and to lay aside all the passage of legislation until the next session, scheduled for 8 Feb. 1622.87 Northants. RO, Montagu 29/62; LJ, iii. 166b-7b; CD 1621, ii. 433-5; iv. 423-5; Nicholas, Procs. 1621, ii. 183-6; Zaller, 104-14, 142-5. For another verdict on this speech, see NLW, 9057E/994.

Although James was keen to highlight his revocation of contentious patents, he was less enamoured of the Commons’ monopolies bill, which sought to ban such grants in the future. At its third reading in the Lords on 1 Dec., Williams joined the earl of Arundel and others in objecting that the bill would infringe the prerogative. The draft was laid aside but, two days later, Williams reminded the House that this needed to be explained to the Commons, to avoid giving offence; a conference was duly arranged.88 LD 1621, pp. 104, 106; LJ, iii. 178b-9a.

During the brief sitting, Williams was twice attacked by Edmund Sheffield^*, 3rd Lord Sheffield, perhaps in retaliation for the disgrace of the latter’s ally, the earl of Southampton. The first occasion was obliquely, on 30 Nov., when Archbishop Abbot reported John Selden’s researches into the Lords’ privileges. Sheffield claimed these papers had been confiscated when Selden was arrested in July. Williams confirmed that the seizure had been made under a royal warrant, that Selden’s drafts had been delivered to him and that he had read them and reported their contents to the king. However, he rebutted Selden’s claims that some of the papers had not been returned.89 LJ, iii. 176a; LD 1621, pp. 100-1; Russell, 123. Nothing came of this allegation, but Sheffield had greater success on 3 Dec., when he tabled a petition claiming that Williams had unfairly dismissed a Chancery case brought by Sheffield’s son-in-law, Sir John Bourchier^‡. Williams insisted that he had dealt fairly with Bourchier, and urged the House to consult the king before reviewing a Chancery case. However, it was resolved that the committee for privileges should hear the petition anyway, although Archbishop Abbot warned Bourchier that if his complaint proved groundless, he could expect punishment.90 LJ, iii. 79b-80a; LD 1621, pp. 106-9; J.S. Hart, Justice Upon Petition, 46-7. Heedless of the consequences, Bourchier pulled faces at Williams on 6 Dec., the day his case was scheduled to be heard. The charge was swiftly dismissed: the judges who had made the ruling with Williams vindicated the lord keeper’s actions, and Bourchier was ordered to be imprisoned and to admit his fault in Chancery, though at Williams’ request, he was spared from incarceration.91 Add. 40086, f. 51v; LJ, iii. 189a-90b, 192a-b; LD 1621, pp. 111-20; Stowe 176, f. 213; Add. 72299, f. 54. Two days after Bourchier’s censure, Williams persuaded the House to pass an order that any future accuser must guarantee to pay the costs of those he accused if his charges proved groundless.92 LJ, iii. 195a.

Most of the rest of Williams’ activities during the brief session were routine. Included on four bill committees;93 Ibid. 171a, 182b, 184a. he also pronounced sentence against two miscreants for breach of parliamentary privilege, and another for selling fake parliamentary protections;94 Ibid. 172b, 196a-b; LD 1621, p. 125. reminded the House that the bill to make the estates of attainted persons liable for their private debts should take account of forfeitures due to the king’s almoner;95 LD 1621, pp. 109-10. laid aside a petition against his own diocesan official Sir John Lambe;96 Hacket, i. 36-8. and persuaded the House to postpone their investigation of the corruption charges brought against the ecclesiastical judge Sir John Bennett^‡.97 LJ, iii. 197b-8a.

On 14 Dec., as the session headed towards collapse over the Commons’ clash with the king, the diplomat John Digby^*, Lord Digby (later 1st earl of Bristol) proposed that a fresh appeal be made to MPs to supply the Palatinate. The House concurred, and Williams was ordered to provide some introductory remarks before Digby addressed the planned conference. However, by then the lower House was refusing to transact business, and as a result this meeting never took place.98 Ibid. 195b, 197a. Williams subsequently endorsed the royal anger at the behaviour of ‘those spiders which infest that noble House of Commons’ in presuming to lecture the king about his son’s marriage. In a letter to Buckingham – clearly passed on to James – he suggested that the king should explain that he had no intention of diminishing the Commons’ privileges. He also recommended that James should exhort MPs to ‘prepare things for a [legislative] session’, failing which he should resort to an immediate dissolution, explain the Commons’ obduracy to the nation at large, and ‘supply the present wants by some other means’. The king followed the first part of this advice, and when it was rejected by the Commons, the session was abruptly ended. Williams subsequently presided over the dissolution on 8 Feb. 1622, the day on which a new legislative session should have begun.99 Cabala (1654), 85-6; Zaller, 170-2; LJ, iii. 202a.

The alternative financial contribution to which Williams alluded in his letter to Buckingham took the form of a benevolence collected to assist forces in the Palatinate. The clergy of Lincoln diocese raised just over £665, under one-third of the usual clerical subsidy, a modest contribution by comparison with the diocesan average of three-quarters of a subsidy.100 E401/1908, 401/2435. The receipts differ from the summary in SP14/133/13. Williams raged at the ‘graceless men’ who forgot their duty to the king’s dispossessed daughter and her children, and ordered his chancellor to report refusers to himself or Archbishop Abbot, ‘that we may understand the reason of their so unreasonable an inconformity’ [sic]. However, his efforts raised only £200 more, which he belatedly paid into the Exchequer in June 1626.101 SP14/132/60.I; E401/2442.

The Spanish Match 1622-3

The conditional nature of Williams’ appointment to the keepership left his tenure open to question, and consequently any talk of a ministerial reshuffle often included speculation about his future. The man generally tipped as his replacement was the lawyer Henry Montagu^*, Viscount Mandeville (later 1st earl of Manchester), who would doubtless have been considered a strong contender at the time of Williams’ appointment in the summer of 1621 were it not for the fact that he had recently been appointed lord treasurer. Early in 1622 speculation revived that Mandeville, now lord president of the Privy Council, would replace Williams, as there was talk of a match between Mandeville’s heir Edward Montagu^* (later 2nd earl of Manchester) and Buckingham’s niece Mary Feilding – the nine-year-old daughter of William Feilding^*, Viscount Feilding (later 1st earl of Denbigh). Williams fell ill at this time – there were rumours he had been poisoned – but talk of his removal ceased when Mary Feilding was betrothed to the earl of Arran [S] (James Hamilton^*, later 2nd earl of Cambridge).102 Add. 72275, f. 116v; NLW, 9058E/1006, 1008; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 426; Add. 72299, f. 65v; WILLIAM FEILDING.

Aside from incurring the enmity of Mandeville, Williams upset other powerful courtiers, chief among them the earl of Arundel. In the autumn of 1621 he questioned the patent appointing Arundel to the long-vacant post of earl marshal. Arundel was to have been accorded the powers exercised by his ancestors, the dukes of Norfolk, but Williams refused to seal this grant, observing that the commissioners who had performed the functions of the marshalcy in the interim had been denied such sweeping powers, and complaining that the patent would have stripped the lord steward, Ludovic Stuart^*, earl (later duke) of Richmond, of his recently acquired jurisdiction over the court of the verge. Arundel, having already received his staff of office from the king, proceeded to exercise his authority regardless, but his patent, as eventually sealed by Williams, was shorn of many of the powers his ancestors had wielded.103 Cabala (1654), 63-4; SP14/122/140; Add. 72254, f. 55; Diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. E. Bourcier, 89; Hacket, i. 70-1; THOMAS HOWARD, EARL OF ARUNDEL.

Williams should have been on better terms with Mandeville’s successor as lord treasurer, Lord Cranfield, whose appointment he welcomed in October 1621: ‘if any man living can improve the king’s revenue with skill and diligence, you are that good husband’. However, the two men fell out the following year, when Williams drafted a general pardon after the dissolution of the 1621 Parliament which proposed to waive a large number of debts due to the crown. He had apparently failed to consult Cranfield about the loss of revenue, who responded by moving that the fees normally collected by the lord keeper for sealing such pardons should go to the Exchequer; Hacket suggested that it was this quarrel which led to the abandonment of the pardon.104 Hacket, i. 104-7. The two men clashed openly in August 1622, when Williams attempted to secure a grant of the profits of small writs, worth £1,000 a year, which Bacon had formerly enjoyed as chancellor. In a detailed rebuttal of this proposal, Cranfield accused the lord keeper of malpractice in the Chancery court, and of allowing his staff to charge the exorbitant sum of £50,000 in fees for receiving petitions over the past year. He also alleged that Williams paid Buckingham a monthly fee in return for his rapid promotion. Williams rebutted all of these charges in detail, and told Buckingham that Cranfield’s real intention was to use these calumnies to force Williams to cede the profits of Chancery fines, then collected by the hanaper office, to the Exchequer.105 Harl. 7000, ff. 100, 107-8; Cabala (1654), 70-3; NLW, 9058E/1046, 1051.

In the midst of the quarrel with Cranfield, fresh talks between Mandeville and Buckingham about a marriage alliance led to a revival of earlier rumours about Williams’ replacement. On this occasion, it was said that Williams would be compensated with the bishopric of Winchester and the deanery of the Chapel Royal – although it would have been difficult to have offered suitable compensation for the incumbent of both these posts, Lancelot Andrewes. In fact, James and Buckingham strove to reconcile the rival interests: Williams officiated at Edward Montagu’s marriage in February 1623;106 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 455, 457, 471, 476; Add. 72299, f. 60r-v. See also the more circumstantial evidence in Hacket, i. 107. and stood as godfather at the baptism of one of Cranfield’s daughters in May 1623.107 Add. 72276, f. 36.

Given his poor relations with Arundel – leader of the pro-Spanish faction at court – and Cranfield, who opposed a war with Spain on financial grounds, Williams was an unlikely supporter of the Spanish Match. However, the king’s insistence on a marriage treaty as the cornerstone of his diplomacy overrode all other considerations for Williams. This is not readily apparent from the account of Williams’ life provided by Hacket, who seems to have dissembled on this issue: writing in the later 1650s (during another war against Spain) he clearly downplayed Williams’ enthusiasm for the marriage. However, in the spring of 1623, while negotiations in Madrid seemed to be going well, and at about the time that Pope Gregory XV issued a dispensation for the marriage, Williams commissioned a Spanish ex-Dominican friar to translate the Book of Common Prayer into Spanish (rewarding him with a prebend at Hereford Cathedral). He also assured Prince Charles that he was complying with Spanish requests to suspend sentences passed against Catholics.108 Cabala (1654), 79; Hacket, i. 126-8; Fasti, xiii. 82-3. Moreover, in June, when the marquis of Inijosa arrived in England to negotiate the marriage treaty, Williams reportedly urged the Privy Council ‘that a way might be thought on how that wall of difference – religion – might not give impediment to the marriage’, which moved Archbishop Abbot to deliver a vigorous rebuttal.109 Add. 72365, f. 160. It was at around this time that Williams was included in a libel which lampooned the sexual incontinence of Buckingham’s affinity, identifying him as the lover of the favourite’s mother: ‘Old bedlame Buckingham / With her lord keeper / She loves the fucking game / He’s her cunt creeper’. The allegation was probably unfounded, but as the countess of Buckingham was a recusant, Williams was cast in the sexual role normally attributed to a Catholic confessor – a logical, if unfounded extension of his pro-Spanish sympathies.110 ‘Heaven bless King James our joy’, Early Stuart Libels online, lines 4-7.

It was not until the news from Madrid suggested that the favourite (newly elevated to a dukedom) and Prince Charles were encountering problems in their negotiations that Williams began to hedge his bets. As early as May, one of his Welsh clients noted he was ‘very hot and choleric’ about the match, and in June Williams claimed that both he and James Hamilton^*, 2nd marquess of Hamilton [S] (and 1st earl of Cambridge in the English peerage), had persuaded the king to back Buckingham’s approach of pressing the Spanish for a speedy decision, even if this risked the collapse of the negotiations. He also warned Buckingham to ‘take heed what words you let fall concerning the lord treasurer’, as Cranfield (now earl of Middlesex) was becoming too powerful in Buckingham’s absence from court.111 NLW, 466E/1105; Hacket, i. 135-6; LIONEL CRANFIELD. In July, Williams helped to allay James’s scruples about signing a marriage treaty which included provision for a comprehensive toleration for Catholics, observing that similar concessions had been made for Catholic minorities in both France and the United Provinces; king and councillors then took oaths to uphold this toleration on 20 July.112 G. Redworth, Prince and the Infanta, 123-6. Thereafter, Williams had a key role in implementing the suspension of the recusancy laws demanded by Spain. He ordered a stay of all proceedings against recusants at the summer assizes, but news of the pope’s death, and Buckingham and Charles’s misgivings that the Spanish were not negotiating in good faith, prompted the keeper to play for time: he delayed a month with minor queries about the drafting of the suspension of the penal laws, and persuaded James to allow him to write privately to magistrates and the ecclesiastical courts to suspend their proceedings, saving a public proclamation of the toleration until the infanta had spent six months in England. Moreover, despite Spanish protests, only one of the dozen Catholic priests held in prison had been released by the time Charles returned to London in early October.113 Cabala (1654), 78; Hacket, i. 145, 155-9, 166; CSP Ven. 1623-5, 137-8; M. Parry, ‘Episcopate and Westminster Pols. 1621-9’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2011), 43-5.

The ‘Blessed Revolution’ and the 1624 Parliament

The prince’s return only intensified Williams’ dilemma, as Buckingham swiftly embarked on a campaign to persuade a deeply reluctant James to repudiate the match and declare war on Spain. As a member of the Privy Council’s committee for foreign affairs, Williams, who supported James, could hardly avoid offending the favourite.114 R. Ruigh, Parl. of 1624, p. 137. Not surprisingly, fresh rumours of the lord keeper’s impending fall soon began to circulate. Despite this, Williams joined Arundel and Middlesex at a meeting of the Privy Council on 20 Dec. in opposing a breach of the talks with Spain; the vote went against them, and over Christmas James reluctantly agreed to summon a fresh Parliament.115 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 527-8, 532; Add. 27962C, f.88r-v; Hacket, i. 167-9; CSP Ven. 1623-5, 182; Ruigh, 32-5. Once this decision was taken, Williams lent his parliamentary influence to the Wynns of Gwydir, delivering the writs for north Wales to Sir Richard Wynn^‡ as soon as they were sealed. As a result, one of the lord keeper’s secretaries, John Mostyn^‡ – a grandson of Sir John Wynn – was returned as knight of the shire for Anglesey, while Williams’ brother-in-law Sir Peter Mutton^‡ stood for Caernarvonshire. However, fearing defeat, Mutton subsequently transferred to the borough seat.116 NLW, 9059E/1172, 1176-7, 1189; HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 547-8, 556, 559, 575. William Boswell^‡, the lord keeper’s secretary for diocesan business, was returned for Boston, Lincolnshire, where he probably enjoyed the support of the rector, John Cotton, who had been allowed to escape proceedings for nonconformity by expressing a minimal respect for ‘nearly all’ of the ecclesiastical laws. Another of Williams’ secretaries, John St Amand^‡, was returned for Stamford, Lincolnshire, where the bishop’s court of audience frequently met. A third member of Williams’ staff, William Wynn, having been frustrated in his early hopes for the Caernarvon Boroughs seat, was brought in for Lyme Regis, Dorset at a by-election held in the autumn of 1624. In addition to employing his influence on his own behalf, Williams was also asked by the king to assist in the return of Sir Robert Naunton for Cambridge University. However, it was Buckingham’s client Sir Thomas Coventry who actually made the nomination. Poor relations with the favourite notwithstanding, Williams made no attempt to hinder the return of Sir Edward Villiers for Westminster.117 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 38, 114, 232, 267; vi. 135; Corresp. of John Cotton ed. S. Bush, 95-6; H. Hajzyk, ‘Church in Lincs. c.1595-c.1640’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1980), 133; R.E. Schreiber, Pol. Career of Sir Robert Naunton, 94.

Early in January 1624, Williams was visited by the archdeacon of Cambrai, Don Francisco de Carondelet, then serving as secretary and chaplain to the Spanish ambassador Don Carlos Coloma. Carondelet raised the unlikely prospect that the king of Spain, Philip IV, might marry the infanta to Gaston d’Orléans, heir presumptive to the French throne, and cede the lower Palatinate (now wholly occupied by the Spanish) to the bridegroom as a dowry. This information was doubtless intended for James’s ears, but Williams, who considered it ‘but a word let fall to terrify me withal’, passed it on to Buckingham instead. However, if Williams was attempting to demonstrate his continuing fidelity to the favourite, he failed: the duke’s secretary John Packer coldly advised him that, at recent Council meetings, Buckingham perceived that he had joined with those ‘whose aim was to tax his proceedings in the managing of the prince’s business’. While insisting that his master did not seek his ruin, Packer warned Williams that Buckingham would ‘hereafter cease to study your fortune, as formerly he hath done’ – hardly a reassuring prospect, as it left the way open to others to try and topple the lord keeper.118 Cabala (1654), 86-7; Ruigh, 141-2, 266. A week later, the Spanish made a more realistic offer to James: the infanta would be sent to England in March, and the lower Palatinate restored to the Elector in June. Williams supported this attempt to revive the Spanish Match, which carried the day in Council, but Prince Charles scotched the plan by refusing to marry the infanta under any circumstances.119 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 541-2; CSP Ven, 1623-5, 201, 208; T. Cogswell, Blessed Rev. 128-30; CHARLES STUART. The details are slightly garbled in Hacket, i. 169.

Williams was left with the difficult task of rebuilding his bridges with Buckingham, which he attempted in a letter of 2 Feb., assuring the duke that he was ‘without the least thought of opposition against your absolute pleasure’. Writing with the encouragement of Prince Charles, he insisted that neither he, nor any other councillor, had conspired to frustrate Buckingham’s anti-Spanish policy, and explained his reasons for believing that the duke had resolved to destroy him. Instead of attempting to reinstate himself in the duke’s favour, Williams merely urged Buckingham not to promote any charges of corruption brought against him in the forthcoming Parliament. However, he invited condemnation if it could be shown that he had expressed anything more than ‘ordinary compliments’ in his treatment of English Catholics. Buckingham seems to have accepted this offer of a truce: shortly before the session began, Sir Francis Englefield was fined in Star Chamber for making an unjust accusation of bribery against the lord keeper. However, the duke ignored the advice Williams had given Prince Charles, not to attack the Spanish party in Parliament by delving into the quarrels over the negotiations in Madrid, and to ask instead merely for funds to recover the Palatinate, either ‘by reconquering the same, or by a war of diversion’.120 Cabala (1654), 88-90; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 545; Hacket, i. 168-71; Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 148; Ruigh, 142.

Parliament was opened on 19 Feb. by the king, who explained that he sought advice about whether to continue the treaties with Spain, for a marriage for Prince Charles and to restore the Palatinate. Williams, as lord keeper, followed this address with a brief speech of his own, in which he expressed the hope that James’s words ‘hath left a sting … in all our hearts’.121 Add. 40087, f. 10; Ruigh, 154-7. Two days later, when the Commons presented their Speaker for approval, Williams outlined a broader royal agenda for the session: ‘something of the common law in general, something for the ordinary supply of princes, somewhat of benevolence, somewhat of the increase of true religion, somewhat of regaining that which is lost to our enemies, somewhat of preserving of our own, and somewhat of the reformation of Ireland’. His specific recommendations echoed James’s earlier speech: those offended by the abrupt dissolution of the 1621 Parliament were urged to ‘let the memory of these abortions be buried in the River Lethe’; while opponents of toleration for Catholics were assured that ‘all the laws are yet in force, no connivance but for propagation of true religion’; and he requested a vote of supply for the Palatinate, the Navy and Ireland.122 Add. 40087, ff. 13v-15v; LJ, iii. 211b-13a; Cogswell, 167-8.

These opening speeches reflected James’s priorities. However, the call for supply suggests that the king had been persuaded to offer some measure of support for the so-called ‘patriot’ agenda. Williams had evidently convinced Buckingham and Prince Charles that he could serve their turn, as when prince and favourite gave a lengthy narration of the breakdown of the talks in Madrid on 24 Feb., it was Williams who was chosen to report this keynote address to the Lords.123 LJ, iii. 216b, 220a-33a; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 3-4; Ruigh, 162-6. He did so three days later, by which time the Spanish ambassadors had complained to James that Buckingham deserved imprisonment and execution for implying that Philip IV of Spain had negotiated in a duplicitous manner. The Lords unanimously agreed that the Spaniards were mistaken, and Williams was ordered to relay this decision to King James. However, it took three weeks for the lord keeper to arrange a meeting, probably because Buckingham wanted to discourage contact between James and the Spanish embassy until the decision to end the marriage talks had been taken.124 LJ, iii. 232b-3a, 271b, 278b-9b; Ruigh, 167-8; Add. 40087, ff. 68, 86v, 98, 117v-18; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 235; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 550.

With a partisan account of the Madrid talks fresh in their minds, peers proceeded to debate the advice to be given to the king about the Spanish negotiations. During these debates Williams signalled that he no longer trusted Spanish assurances of diplomatic or military support to restore the Elector Palatine: ‘he knows not how otherwise to advise the king than not to trust anything but himself for the restitution of the Palatinate’. When the debate continued on 28 Feb., the Lords swiftly resolved to press for the abandonment of negotiations with Spain. However, Williams advised the House not to hold a vote, lest the Commons viewed this as a ‘leading opinion’ which left them with no option but to fund a war. His motion was ignored, but he was nevertheless chosen as one of the speakers to relay to the Commons the Lords’ decision to break off talks at a conference on 2 Mar., and to report its results.125 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 7-8, 11; LJ, iii. 238a; SP14/160/33; Ruigh, 176-7; Russell, 163-4.

The Commons agreed that negotiations with Spain should be ended, but proved less belligerent than the enthusiasts for war with Spain had hoped, offering no financial incentive. Williams, having clearly received early warning of this decision, asked whether the Lords should explain their reasons for seeking a diplomatic rupture. The hawks feared this might intimidate the king, and after a long debate, Williams was ordered to respond with the vague answer that the intended breach was for the king’s ‘own honour, conveniency of religion and the state’.126 Ruigh, 177-86; Russell, 165-72; Cogswell, 174-81; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 17-19; LJ, iii. 242a-b. At the conference held on 2 Mar. it was resolved to set down in writing detailed arguments for breaking off negotiations with Spain, but work on this task was swiftly suspended, as the news that James was holding talks with Archdeacon Carondelet forced Buckingham to travel to Theobalds, to ensure that the king had not changed his mind. Williams duly curtailed the Lords’ debate on the treaties with a motion for the first reading of a bill to confirm Prince Charles’s purchase of the manor of Kenilworth, Warwickshire.127 LJ, iii. 243b, 244b-5a; Add. 40087, f. 48; Ruigh, 186-91; Cogswell, 181-3.

If Williams had fallen in line with the aims of the so-called patriot coalition, others had not: on 5 Mar. the Commons again declined to make an early vote of supply; and while James followed Buckingham’s advice in informing a parliamentary delegation that he would consider their request to break off negotiations with Spain, he was clearly reluctant to take any decisive action without a vote of supply, which put the onus back on the Commons. On the following morning, when Abbot, who was to have reported James’s speech to the Lords, fell sick, many shared his despondency, and Williams’ motion to provide a routine first reading for some bills had to be pressed to a voice vote before it was carried.128 Ruigh, 196-201; Russell, 182-3; Cogswell, 183-4; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 232. The hawks returned to the offensive on 11 Mar., when Lord Treasurer Middlesex in the upper House and Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Richard Weston^* (later 1st earl of Portland) in the Commons presented an account of crown finances tailored to suggested that preparations for a war would be affordable. Prince Charles offered the further assurance that his father would not appropriate any funds voted to pay off his debts, an important concession that the earl of Southampton and Williams successfully moved to relay to the lower House, where MPs were then debating supply.129 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, f. 33; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 26-7; LJ, iii. 256a; 257b-8a; Ruigh, 202-8; Russell, 184-5; Cogswell, 189-94.

Despite Charles’s efforts, the Commons declined to vote a specific sum until James committed himself to a breach with Spain, insisting that their loosely-worded resolution to assist a war ‘in a parliamentary manner’ be relayed to the king verbatim. The Lords acquiesced, but, at the suggestion of Williams and the prince, this unenthusiastic message was prefaced with an introduction delivered by Abbot. This assumed that war with Spain had already been decided upon, which offended James when delivered on 14 Mar., because an explicit commitment to hostilities was precisely what he was trying to avoid. At this meeting, the king demanded a heavy price for his co-operation: one subsidy and two fifteenths a year until his debts were cleared, and five subsidies and ten fifteenths for war finance, in the first instance.130 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 29, 32; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 548-9; Ruigh, 208-13; Russell, 185-6; Cogswell, 195-6. While Charles and Buckingham worked on James to reduce these demands, Williams drafted a message inviting MPs to another conference, at which Charles explained that the king had agreed not to demand supply for debt repayment, and would devote the entire six subsidies and 12 fifteenths he had demanded to the war effort. This was far more than the Commons were prepared to offer, but after a lengthy debate, MPs voted three subsidies and three fifteenths towards military preparations on 20 Mar., and held out the prospect of a similar grant once hostilities had commenced.131 Add. 40087, f. 86; Ruigh, 210-16; Russell, 187; Cogswell, 197-8; CHARLES STUART. The king’s acceptance of these terms on 23 Mar. sparked public demonstrations of joy; members of the Spanish embassy were jostled on the streets, allowing Buckingham, seconded by Williams, to act as defenders of Spanish honour, in moving that Parliament should punish those involved.132 LJ, iii. 280a; Add. 40087, f. 118v.

The support Williams offered to Buckingham and Charles over the breach with Spain did not win his return to favour with the duke, but (as Packer had promised and the king required) there was no concerted effort to promote attacks on him during the Parliament either. Nevertheless, Williams did not lack for enemies, and petitions against him were received early in the session, of which only two, concerning not corruption, but jurisdictional disputes with the common law courts, were held to warrant further investigation.133 CSP Ven. 1623-5, pp. 242, 256; NLW, 9059E/1194, 1198. One of these was from the London woodmonger Thomas Morley, who claimed that Williams had broken his oath of office in procuring an injunction from Star Chamber to stay his King’s Bench suit against Serjeant Sir Thomas Richardson^‡. On 19 Mar., Archbishop Abbot raised this issue in the Lords, who swiftly agreed that Morley’s petition constituted a libel, not merely against Williams, but against the entire Star Chamber. Peers were further incensed by Morley’s action in having his petition printed and distributed at Westminster. Williams necessarily allowed others to promote his cause in this instance, but he doubtless had a hand in selecting this vulnerable opponent. He also attracted the support of Prince Charles who, flushed with the success of the subsidy vote, sealed Morley’s fate on the afternoon 22 Mar.: ‘punish him [Morley] for the scandal laid on the lord keeper, and for his false information of us’. As a result, Morley, together with David Waterhouse^‡, the attorney who had drafted his petition, and the stationer who had printed it, were all fined, imprisoned and required to apologize for their transgressions.134 LJ, iii. 269a-70b, 277a-b, 281a; Add. 40087, ff. 96v-7, 102v, 110r-v; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 35-8, 41-7, 60; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, ff. 45v, 46v, 48v-9v; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 234; NLW, 9059E/1206.

Factional struggles in court and Parliament, April to May 1624

The king’s acceptance of the Commons’ vote of supply marked an important step along the road to war, thus raising the stakes for the chief opponents of any future conflict: the Spanish diplomatic corps and the hispanophile party at court. Lord Treasurer Middlesex, in particular, with little to lose by proclaiming open hostility to Buckingham, attempted to use his relative by marriage, Arthur Brett, to oust Buckingham from the king’s favour.135 LIONEL CRANFIELD. There is no evidence that Williams sought to embroil himself in these plots, and when he did become implicated in one such scheme, he did his best to extricate himself without further blackening his reputation with Buckingham.

One of the most pressing issues facing the ‘patriot coalition’ when Parliament resumed sitting after Easter was the need for public confirmation of the breach with Spain. On 1 Apr. Buckingham brought alarming news of the increase of Spanish naval forces and troop transports at Dunkirk, and asked whether money could be borrowed in anticipation of the subsidies recently voted. Williams assured the House there were ‘divers former precedents’, and inquiries were made to the Commons, without success. On 5 Apr. Williams asked what had become of this project, but Prince Charles asked that the issue be laid aside.136 Add. 40088, ff. 2v-3; LD 1624 and 1626, p. 52; Cogswell, 230-1. He did so because the Commons had resolved instead to petition the king to enforce the recusancy laws, which concession, if granted, would provide a public repudiation of the toleration the Spanish had required as the price of a marriage. Buckingham had moved to ask the Commons for a conference about this issue on 3 Apr., but Williams had persuaded the House to allow more time, presumably because he knew the Commons was then debating a draft petition. However, the strident tone of this document was more than James could stomach, and he stayed the messenger who had been about to leave for Madrid with the official dispatch ending the treaties. Two days later, Charles moved to tone down the preamble to the recusancy petition, but he had clearly not briefed his ecclesiastical allies. Archbishop Abbot fulminated against the public triumphalism of Catholics, while Williams concurred, moving that ‘not one syllable ... be amended’. Charles and Buckingham eventually managed to bring the bishops in line: Williams insisted he saw ‘no reason to retract his opinion’, but conceded that if ‘conveniency’ required an alteration, it might be done. On the following day Abbot reported the new draft, shorn of its preamble, and Williams held a vote to confirm its adoption.137 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 51-5, 58; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 6v; Cogswell, 231-3. The two Houses continued to dispute the details of the petition for some time, and on 10 Apr., when the Commons insisted that the recusancy laws be enforced by public proclamation, Williams backed Charles’s call to expunge this demand, observing that, as the king (thanks to Williams’ own efforts) had promulgated a toleration merely by private letter, the same means should be used for its repeal.138 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 62-3. Once this petition was agreed, the Commons drafted another asking James to sack all recusant officeholders. When this demand was reported to the Lords on 21 May, Williams, fearing the appointment of Catholics might be blamed on him, explained the vetting procedure for magistrates, and insisted that he always struck out ‘justly suspected recusants’. James ignored this second petition, but at the prorogation, Williams relayed the king’s consent to enforcement of the recusancy laws.139 Ibid. 99-100; LJ, iii. 424b.

In the midst of the debates about the recusancy petition, Williams was visited by Archdeacon Carondelet, probably shortly after 5 Apr. – the day on which Buckingham’s clients launched an attack on Lord Treasurer Middlesex in the Commons. The Spaniard sought to recruit Williams’ support for an audacious scheme intended to destroy the so-called patriot coalition at court.140 Williams’ account of the first meeting is dated 7 Apr. in Cabala (1654), 90-3, and also in the original, Harl. 7000, f. 152. However, the events cited therein fit better with 5 Apr., see Ruigh, 274-5. Hacket, i. 198-9 says nothing about a meeting until near the end of April. Claiming that Buckingham had attacked Williams in Parliament, ‘and intended to do so again’, Don Francisco suggested that Williams ‘set upon him [Buckingham] with the king’, when ‘there was a fit occasion’. In one of the Spaniard’s increasingly rare private audiences with the king, Carondelet insisted he had warned James that in the previous autumn – before any decision had been reached about a breach with Spain – Buckingham had resolved ‘that his Majesty was to be restrained, and confined to his country house and pastimes’. At his most recent meeting with the king on 1 Apr., Carondelet had elaborated on this advice, telling James ‘that these kingdoms are not now governed by a monarch, but by a triumvirate, whereof Buckingham was the first and chiefest, the prince the second, and the king the last’ – an assessment of Buckingham’s dominance which was, at best, exaggerated rather than fabricated. Carondelet insisted that James had taken his views seriously, responding that no English courtier dared bring any charge against Buckingham, and encouraging the diplomat to find evidence of the favourite’s ‘popular courses’. Williams was probably stunned by wild talk of a conspiracy, where he might reasonably have expected a fresh offer about the restitution of the Palatinate, and he sent a warning to Buckingham about this undiplomatic overture. The archdeacon realized that Williams had failed to rise to the bait when he returned the following day, as the lord keeper insisted upon his ‘indissoluble friendship’ with the duke, merely offering ‘to show some way, how the duke might be won to them [the Spanish], and to continue the peace’. Carondelet quietly discarded the notion of a plot, responding merely that Ambassador Inijosa expected fresh instructions from Spain ‘concerning the present restitution of the Palatinate’.141 Cabala (1654), 77-8, 90-3; Ruigh, 269-77. PRO31/12/29, ff. 89v-93v is an English précis of Carondelet’s interview with King James on 1/11 April.

For Buckingham and Charles, the parliamentary focus after Easter shifted to the prosecution of Lord Treasurer Middlesex, who had infuriated the duke by his opposition to the peculations of the Villiers clan and the breach with Spain, and also by attempting to promote Brett in the king’s affections. Early in the session, James advised his son not to connive at the destruction of a minister, but, as Williams explained to the king, the prince’s support for the favourite’s campaign meant that the treasurer had few friends.142 Hacket, i. 189-90; Ruigh, 303-12; LIONEL CRANFIELD. The Lords’ investigation began on 2 Apr., when Archbishop Abbot noted that the subcommittee for munitions had received complaints against Middlesex concerning a deficit in the accounts of the late Sir Roger Dallison^‡, former lieutenant of the Ordnance.143 LJ, iii. 286a, 299b-301a; Ruigh, 313; LIONEL CRANFIELD. Carondelet’s overtures to Williams, which occurred only a few days later, made it imperative that the lord keeper prove his fidelity to Buckingham. An opportunity to do so arose on 9 Apr., when Middlesex complained to the Lords about the ‘practices and conspiracies against me’ in this case. He was challenged to name his accusers, and when Williams pressed for an immediate response, the earl named Buckingham’s clients Sir Robert Pye^‡, John Coke^‡ and Sir Miles Fleetwood^‡.144 LJ, iii. 296b; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 60-2; Ruigh, 322-7; Russell, 199-200; HP Commons 1604-29, iii. 602-3; iv. 286-7; v. 785-7. Three days later, Williams tabled a petition which explained that the treasurer had bought Dallison’s estates at a discount, and lent himself £12,000 from the Exchequer to cover the shortfall in the Ordnance Office accounts.145 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, ff. 15-16v; LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 65-6, 69-70; LJ, iii. 299b-301a; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 392-400. The Commons delivered a long list of charges against Middlesex at a conference on 15 Apr., which Williams reported to the Lords the following morning. The munitions subcommittee, assigned to investigate, was then reinforced by Williams and several others, presumably at Buckingham’s insistence.146 LJ, iii. 306a, 307a-10b; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, ff. 22-5v; Add. 40088, ff. 43-7v; Ruigh, 332-3.

The examination of witnesses took two weeks to complete, during which time Middlesex pressed for an audience with the king, and Buckingham’s supremacy at court was perceived to be hanging in the balance. The favourite’s position seemed particularly precarious when, on 24 Apr., James left Whitehall for the Garter ceremonies at Windsor, but failed to take the duke with him in his coach. The king’s suspicions had been sharpened by a memorandum secretly presented to him by the Spanish diplomat Fra Diego de la Fuente, which elaborated on the allegations about a palace coup at Whitehall which Carondelet had made to Williams several weeks earlier. Buckingham hastened after James, while Prince Charles recruited Williams to obtain a copy of de la Fuente’s memorandum. Using information provided by Carondelet’s English mistress, Williams, having held aloof from the diplomat since their awkward meeting several weeks earlier, arrested an English priest, which obliged Don Francisco to come to plead for his release. It was at this meeting (Hacket recalled, many years later) that the lord keeper obtained a copy of de la Fuente’s memorandum. This was quickly dispatched to Windsor, where it apparently reached Charles and Buckingham in time for them to prepare for a stormy interview with James on 25 April.147 PRO31/12/29, ff. 101, 105-8; Hacket i. 195-200; Ruigh, 278-97; PRINCE CHARLES. The text Williams obtained is presumably that printed in Cabala (1654), 91-2, although there it is dated to 7 Apr. 1624. However, Williams, who had presumably received no firm intelligence concerning the outcome of the meeting at Windsor, sent to the duke on the 26th protesting that he was too ill to attend the Lords the following day. In the event, he took the woolsack as usual, as Buckingham eventually notified him of the timely arrival of the memorandum.148 R. Lockyer, Buckingham, 195-6; Ruigh, 287; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 225.

Meanwhile, in the Lords, Abbot made a preliminary report of the investigation into the charges against Middlesex on 24 April. Williams, mindful of the allegation that the lord treasurer’s secretary had issued warrants under a dry stamp of his master’s signature, fretted that he might have erred in applying the great seal under the authority of warrants which were technically forgeries, but the Lords, focused on Middlesex, chose to overlook this possible misdemeanour.149 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, f. 33. On 5 May, King James, whose fears of an impending court putsch had by now subsided, offered a guarded defence of the lord treasurer to both Houses, which Williams reported two days later, but he followed this with a motion to read the impeachment charges against Middlesex.150 LJ, iii. 343a-4b, 348a; Ruigh, 336-8. During the trial, which took place over several days, Williams was required to deliver messages from the king exonerating the treasurer from wrongdoing over two specific charges,151 LJ, iii. 365a-b, 375b; Add. 40088, ff. 62v, 72v. but his chairmanship of the proceedings was largely hostile to the accused. On 7 May, when the lord treasurer rebutted the accusation that he had profited unduly from his mastership of the great wardrobe, Williams removed himself from the woolsack to the earls’ bench to offer his personal testimony that the treasurer only revealed the scale of his profits from the wardrobe on learning he was to receive full compensation for surrendering the mastership. Williams later remarked that Middlesex had ‘hoodwinked’ the king in failing to declare the wardrobe accounts, and on several occasions he reproved the treasurer for wandering off the point in his response to other charges.152 LJ, iii. 349b-50a; PA, HL/JO/PO/5/1/3, f. 50; Add. 40088, ff. 52r-v, 54r-v, 65, 68v-9. He also lost patience with Middlesex when the latter failed to appear at the bar of the House on 11 May, pleading sickness; the lord treasurer, he observed, had ‘no cause of aspersion on the House’, but rather ‘owes thanks’. Middlesex reappeared that afternoon, when he complained about the wording of the charge about the Ordnance Office. Williams retorted, ‘whereby injuriously dealt with?’ and ensured that the attorney general, Sir Thomas Coventry, was exonerated. After Middlesex defended his 1622 imposition of £2 a tun on wine imports, Williams recalled that many of the Privy Council had been opposed to this duty, only to be overruled by the lord treasurer.153 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 72-3; Add. 40088, ff. 77, 84-5, 87; LJ, iii. 374a, 377a, 378b-9a.

On 12 May, when the Lords discussed each of the charges against Middlesex in detail, Williams was more even-handed that he had been during the prosecution. Leniency was possible at this stage, as the sheer quantity of the evidence guaranteed a conviction. The lord keeper noted that three of the five charges relating to the great wardrobe concerned small sums, but concluded that Middlesex had ‘destroyed the king’s bounty’ in failing to render accounts. He also judged that the solicitation of a New Year’s gift from the customs farmers was ‘sordid’ rather than damning; dismissed as trivial the failure to repay customs duties for sugar re-exports and the levying of purveyance on imports of grocery wares; and considered the excessive fees charged by Middlesex’s secretary in the Court of Wards ‘not worthy of censure’. However, he roundly condemned the proceedings over Dallison’s lands, and the use of a dry stamp by the treasurer’s secretary.154 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 74, 78, 81-3; PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/3, ff.71v, 72v. On the following morning, Williams moved to debate the lord treasurer’s sentence, speaking out against Middlesex’s penchant for cutting expenditure while making private gain (‘no fault can be greater than a judge to be corrupt’) and proposing that the treasurer’s fine ‘might equal his gettings’.155 LD 1624 and 1626, pp. 86, 88, 90. Finally, Williams supported calls for Middlesex to be required to make restitution to those, such as Dallison, who had lost by his corrupt dealings. His intervention ensured that a committee was appointed to draft a compensation bill; he and Mandeville examined the accounts of the losses incurred by the officers of the Ordnance; and in the final days of the session, he arbitrated disputes over the scale of the compensation to be provided.156 Ibid. 91, 103-4; Add. 40088, ff. 117v, 131, 143; LJ, iii. 406b, 418b, 420a-b, 421b-2a.

Having done everything Buckingham and Charles might have expected over the breach with Spain and the lord treasurer’s impeachment, Williams cannot have been pleased that further complaints about his own conduct in office resurfaced in the closing weeks of the session. The principal allegation concerned a Chancery decree presenting a royal chaplain to a benefice, in defiance of the jurisdiction claimed by the Court of Wards. This cause had been included in Middlesex’s complaint against Williams in 1622, and it was ultimately settled by a private bill compensating Lady Darcy, the claimant to the advowson. However, the Commons’ investigation was handled by the duchy of Cornwall official Thomas Gewen^‡, which suggested that Prince Charles was the promoter of the complaint; one of Williams’ Welsh contacts noted rumours that the lord keeper would be forced to resign his office.157 SP14/163/50; Harl. 7000, f. 108; NLW, 466E/1223; CSP Ven. 1623-5, p. 327; HP Commons 1604-29, iv. 358. On the penultimate day of the session, a petition against Williams from another disgruntled Chancery litigant, Timothy Pinkney, was reported to the Lords. The House resolved that the cause was not serious enough to warrant charges, and referred the dispute to the arbitration of three common law judges, while several other petitions complaining about Chancery suits were assigned to Williams himself to resolve.158 Add. 40088, f. 140v; LJ, iii. 415b-17a.

Final year as lord keeper 1624-5

Although Williams survived the 1624 parliamentary session unscathed, his position remained precarious, as he was still trying to serve two masters – James and Charles. In May, after Middlesex’s fall, the king instructed Williams to seal a commission appointing Sir Richard Weston, the chancellor of the Exchequer, as acting lord treasurer, but to keep the patent by him – doubtless because the appointment of a notorious hispanophile would have caused problems in Parliament. Williams privately advised Charles of the existence of this order, who said he hoped to persuade his father to rescind the grant, a view the lord keeper then recounted to Buckingham, together with his own recommendation of Weston: ‘I know no fitter man in England for the office, if he come in as a creature of the prince and your grace’s; nor unfitter if he should offer to take it, without your likings’. A few weeks later, Williams sent Buckingham assurances of his ‘continued resolution to live, and die, your grace’s most constant, and most faithful servant’, and in October 1624 he helped Buckingham negotiate the purchase of the earldom of Clare by John Holles^*, 1st Lord Houghton.159 Cabala (1654), 93-4, 96-9; Hacket, i. 202; JOHN HOLLES. However, with Middlesex and Bristol, the former ambassador extraordinary to Spain, in disgrace, and Secretary Calvert planning to sell his office, it was clear that Buckingham intended to destroy the Spanish party at court. Williams, with his three-year tenure as lord keeper due to expire, looked vulnerable, particularly at the start of the Michaelmas term, when it was noted that he sat infrequently in Westminster Hall. However, rumours that he was to be replaced by Mandeville, or that he would at least surrender the deanery of Westminster to Dr Walter Balcanquhall, proved unfounded, as in early November James renewed his commission as keeper for another three years.160 Add. 72276, ff. 109v, 112v, 125v, 127v, 133v; Add. 72299, f. 139; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 585.

After the breach with Spain, the diplomatic agenda was dominated by negotiations for a French match, which were chiefly handled by Buckingham’s clients, in Paris: in July 1624 Lord Houghton noted that Williams, Arundel and Calvert had been excluded from the Privy Council commission overseeing the negotiations.161 Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxv), 285. Nevertheless, Williams was expected to answer inquiries from the French ambassador about the legal technicalities involved in granting a toleration to English Catholics. When asked to suspend the persecution of Catholics during the summer of 1624, he insisted ‘there was no such matter in this state’, but urgently appealed to the duke for advice, ‘being otherwise a mere stranger in all these proceedings’.

In December, when a French delegation arrived in England to finalize the treaty, James arranged lodgings at Westminster, where the Frenchmen attended divine service conducted by Williams. The decorum of the occasion surprised those among the delegates who had heard lurid tales of puritan excesses; and each diplomat was presented with a French translation of the Book of Common Prayer, which Williams had commissioned.162 R.E. Schreiber, First Carlisle (Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc. lxxiv), 55-77; Lockyer, 198-209; Hacket, i. 209-12. The chief French negotiator, Secretary of State Villeauxclercs, a dévôt, listened carefully to the complaints of English Catholics and sought a generous toleration to smooth the passage of a papal dispensation for the marriage. Williams outlined the legal penalties laid on recusants, as he had done for the Spanish in the previous year, while his chaplain, Hacket, handled the theological arguments, insisting that ‘though the terror of the laws is great, yet the execution hath been gentle’, as the Catholic gentry had not been ruined by fines and confiscations. However, Pope Urban imposed unexpectedly strict terms for a dispensation, and on 13 Mar. 1625 Williams warned Buckingham that the French ambassador, the marquis d’Effiat, intended to demand revisions to the marriage treaty from the king. In the event, Effiat conceded that the treaty should be left unaltered after Williams demonstrated that the prosecutions of which the French complained were ‘but orations’, local indictments routinely remanded into King’s Bench, where ‘the king may and doth release them at his pleasure’. Nevertheless, James undertook to write a letter explaining how the toleration was to be implemented. The warrant for a suspension of the recusancy laws was signed on 1 May.163 Cabala (1654), 95, 104-5; Hacket, i. 212-22; ii. 6-7; Schreiber, First Carlisle, 81-7. For implementation of the toleration, see Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Pols. 1621-5 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxxiv), 364.

The marriage negotiations were interrupted by the king’s declining health. Summoned to court in place of Bishop Andrewes (who was sick), Williams gave James the eucharist and prayed at his bedside during his final hours.164 Cabala (1654), 104, 106-7; CSP Ven. 1623-5, p. 627; Hacket, i. 222-3; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 608. King Charles took Williams’ oath on 28 Mar., the day after his father’s death, and ordered him to swear in the rest of the Privy Council. Keen to obtain funds to launch the long-awaited attack on Spain, Charles also ordered the prompt recall of the 1624 Parliament, prorogued only two weeks earlier. However, Williams reminded him that it had automatically been dissolved by James’s death, whereupon he was instructed to call fresh elections. As in the previous year, Williams sent the writs for north Wales to one of Sir John Wynn’s allies, but his nominees were less successful on this occasion. In Anglesey, Sir Sackvill Trevor^‡ overcame John Mostyn, while in Caernarvonshire Sir Peter Mutton was also defeated. William Wynn, too, abandoned his prospects at Caernarvon Boroughs to allow the return of Sir Edward Littleton^‡, Mutton’s companion as a judge on the north Wales circuit. In Denbighshire and Flintshire Williams’ hopes of making nominations were frustrated by prior agreement among the local gentry. Only two of Williams’ servants were successfully returned, John St Amand for Stamford, and William Boswell for Boston, where Williams had quietly permitted the radical minister John Cotton to arrange for his curate to perform the ceremonies he balked at.165 Hacket, ii. 3; Procs. 1625, pp. 675, 684; HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 232, 548, 556, 559, 566, 568; vi. 135; Corresp. of John Cotton, 98-9.

At the new king’s behest, Williams preached for two hours at James’s funeral on 7 May. In his text, which Hacket claimed was modelled on sermons delivered at the funerals of Henry VII of England and Henri IV of France, Williams compared his late sovereign to King Solomon:

first he was crowned babe, so was Solomon; he was twice crowned, so was Solomon; Solomon lived in peace all his time, so did our king, and more procured peace to his neighbour countries; Solomon was wise and learned, so was our king whose works in print do testify…

He also praised James’s ‘patronage of the doctrine, the discipline and the maintenance of the Church’, and gave an extended account of the king’s deathbed testimonies of faith in the Church of England.166 Hacket, i. 223; ii. 3; J. Williams, Great Britains Salomon (1625), 47, 67-73; NLW, 9060E/1338; McCullough, (suppl. cal. 294-5); Add. 72255, f. 178; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 616. Williams’ servants took Charles’s selection of their master for the task of preaching at James’s funeral as a mark of royal favour, but speculation about the lord keeper’s removal continued. The uncertain health of Tobie Matthew^*, archbishop of York, reminded some that Williams had been promised the next vacant archbishopric (and, possibly, the presidency of the council in the North, too) on his resigning the keepership. However, Hacket retrospectively claimed that it was his master’s lack of enthusiasm for the war with Spain which cost him the favour of both Charles and Buckingham.167 NLW, 9060E/1335, 1337, 1340; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 613; Hacket, ii. 4-5.

While the king went to Kent to fetch his bride, Henrietta Maria, Williams handled routine preparations for the forthcoming Parliament. At the end of May, he advised Charles that he had withheld the seal from a pension of £2,000 a year to Secretary of State Lord Conway (Edward Conway^*, later 1st Viscount Conway), on the grounds that the intended grant might discourage the Commons from voting supply. He also recalled that the most recent precedent for such a grant was the lease of the sugar farm cited in the impeachment of Lord Treasurer Middlesex. Delays to the new queen’s arrival meant the session was postponed twice, but Williams’ advice ‘to think of putting off the [law] term and removing the Parliament’ in view of the outbreak of plague in London was ignored.168 Hacket, ii. 7; Procs. 1625, pp. 640-2.

Charles opened the session on 18 June, with a brief speech recalling the undertaking of both Houses in 1624 to support a war with Spain, and insisting that (contrary to the marriage alliance recently agreed with the French) he had no intention of allowing toleration to Catholics. However, he left Williams to deliver the unpleasant news that the money voted in 1624 was spent, and that the need for funds was so acute that subsidies might take too long to collect; suggestions were invited for other means to raise money speedily.169 Procs. 1625, pp. 29-30, 191-3, 493-4; Hacket, ii. 9-10; NLW, 9060E/1346, 1348; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 97; Russell, 219; C. Thompson, ‘Ct. Pols. and Parlty. Conflict in 1625’, Conflict in Early Stuart Eng. ed. R. Cust and A. Hughes, 215. Two days later, when the Commons’ newly elected Speaker, Sir Thomas Crewe^‡, asked for assurances to be given that the recusancy laws would be enforced, Williams urged MPs ‘to trust him [Charles] with the manner thereof, and he will be careful to give you good satisfaction of his zeal herein’.170 Procs. 1625, pp. 34-7, 196-7, 497-9; Hacket, ii. 11-13; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 625; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 97.

With supply the only item on the royal agenda, the Lords had little to do at the start of the session. The Commons made a promising start on 22 June when, in anticipation of a war, they drafted a petition to the king for a general fast; Williams reported this to the Lords on the following day.171 Procs. 1625, pp. 43, 46-7. However, the supply debate, on 30 June, produced an offer of only two subsidies, and a subsequent attempt (inspired by Buckingham) to reopen the debate swiftly failed on 8 July. Nevertheless, when the subsidy bill was submitted for the royal assent on 11 July, Williams assured both Houses that Charles was ‘well pleased with our gift’.172 Ibid. 371; Russell, 220, 224-7, 235-7; Thompson, 174-6. The Commons then formally petitioned for enforcement of the recusancy laws, ignoring the personal assurances Charles had offered at the start of the session. They also attacked the rise of anti-Calvinist views in the Church of England. This petition was reported to the Lords by Williams on 1 July, amended on his initiative three days later, and delivered to the king on 8 July. Charles merely promised to study it, but as Parliament adjourned on 11 July, Williams delivered a fresh message, promising that the king’s intentions would become clear through his implementation of the recusancy laws.173 Procs. 1625, pp. 78, 80, 84-6, 104, 117-18, 122, 510, 525; Russell, 229-31; Thompson, 178.

The decision to reconvene at Oxford on 1 Aug. was taken at a meeting of the Privy Council on 10 July, when (according to Hacket) Williams opposed Buckingham’s plan to ask for further supply, both because the plague was spreading rapidly, and because a request for two grants in one session was sure to offend the Commons. The lord keeper told the king, in a private aside, that the duke’s enemies planned to attack him at Oxford, and advised that Parliament be prorogued until the New Year, by which time he confidently asserted that he would be able to mollify the ‘chief sticklers’ against the favourite. When Charles asked why this advice should be kept from the duke, Williams observed that ‘he will not bear me with moderation’. Hacket dated Buckingham’s decision to seek Williams’ downfall to this episode.174 Hacket, ii. 13-14.

The Oxford sitting began inauspiciously for Williams, with a petition to the Commons about a pardon he had sealed for a Catholic priest and several Devon recusants on 12 July – the day after he had assured both Houses of Charles’s determination to enforce the recusancy laws. Buckingham, who had unsuccessfully approached Sir Francis Seymour^‡ to lead this attack on Williams, instigated this complaint to create a smokescreen which would distract attention away from himself, though in point of fact the lord keeper, learning of the duke’s intention, promoted attacks on the favourite the same morning.175 Heylyn, 167; GEORGE VILLIERS. In fact, the case against Williams collapsed when the Chancery official responsible for drafting the pardon testified that his master had in fact halted the sealing until he received a direct order from Secretary Conway, acting on orders from the duke.176 Procs. 1625, pp. 375-6, 530-1; NLW, 9060E/1358; Hacket ii. 14-15, 18; Russell, 239-40; Thompson, 179; HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 258. Shortly after this clash, Williams spoke to Buckingham, making recommendations similar to those he had offered the king on 10 July. With some MPs now openly hostile to the favourite, Williams advised the duke to use the outbreak of plague in Oxford as a pretext to order a prorogation until the New Year. He should then surrender some of his offices, and thereby ‘go less in envy, and not less in power’. Williams also undertook to win over some of the duke’s enemies when Parliament reconvened. Failing that, the lord keeper offered to lead Buckingham’s defence in the Lords if impeachment charges were filed. In response, Hacket recalled, the favourite growled ‘I will look who I trust to’ and stalked away.177 Hacket, ii. 16.

Williams attempted to sweeten the appeal for further supply made to both Houses on 4 Aug. by offering to give an undertaking that any sums voted would be spent ‘with the advice of a settled, and a constant council’, by which he may have meant the council of war, which had overseen the spending of the 1624 subsidies. According to the Venetian ambassador, Williams also helped to spread the word that, in view of the plague, Charles intended to leave Parliament to judge ‘whether they should continue to sit or adjourn’, a promise which was included in the speech made by the king’s spokesman, John Coke^‡.178 Ibid. 20; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 142; Procs. 1625, p. 135; Russell, 241-2; Thompson, 180-1. However, the Commons declined to give further supply, and called instead for the king’s long-promised answer to the recusancy petition. The Privy Council were almost unanimous in their advice to Charles to reinstate the recusancy laws in order to humour the Parliament, but Williams insisted that the king’s honour was involved in the marriage treaty. Only after Buckingham and Carlisle persuaded him that a crackdown did not break the letter of the marriage treaty did he fall into line. Williams and Buckingham duly revealed Charles’s intention to order full enforcement of the laws on the afternoon of 8 August. However, Williams’ initial instincts were subsequently proved correct, as Buckingham spent much of the next six months trying to mollify the French for this breach of good faith. Moreover, the Commons were not convinced by this coup de théâtre, as MPs continued to complain about the pardon of 12 July, which Williams explained had been agreed with the French long before it was sealed, insisting he had prevaricated in hope that it might be laid aside after the diplomats left for Paris.179 Procs. 1625, pp. 146-9, 154, 169, 425, 552; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 143; Russell, 243-9; Thompson, 181-3.

The Commons still refused a fresh vote of supply, and on the evening of 11 Aug. the Privy Council resolved to end the session; protests from Abbot and Williams were overruled by the king, and Williams was required to deliver the dissolution commission the next morning.180 Procs. 1625, p. 567; CSP Ven. 1625-6, 147; Russell, 249-51; Thompson, 183-4. At court, rumours of Williams’ impending fall circulated immediately, and on 14 Aug. he complained to the king about Buckingham’s hostility towards him since James’s death.181 Hacket, ii. 17-18; HMC Mar and Kellie, ii. 233. Charles, apparently hoping to downplay the seriousness of parliamentary attacks on the favourite, was reluctant to make a scapegoat of such a prominent figure immediately after the dissolution. However, Buckingham’s offer of the keepership to Sir Thomas Coventry, made in late August, was accepted on 13 Sept., the point at which (Hacket recalled), the king agreed to Williams’ removal. The immediate timing of the dismissal was apparently settled on 11 Oct., shortly before Buckingham’s departure for the Continent, when the duke informed his master that the lord keeper had been plotting with Bristol and others to secure a fresh Parliament and compass his downfall.182 Harl. 1581, f. 328; Hacket, ii. 18-20; GEORGE VILLIERS. Charles sent Conway to inform Williams of his impending removal, which was justified on the pretext that he had exceeded the three year tenure set by King James. Ordered to retire to his see, Williams inquired whether he was now confined to his diocese, but was informed that he was only to forbear attending the Privy Council for a time, and would be allowed to retain all his preferments until further notice. Few believed the administrative pretext given for Williams’ removal. A libel of the time suggested that the lord keeper’s conceit, or bribe-taking, or the large sum offered by Coventry, was responsible, while court gossip correctly divined that ‘the carriage of Parliament matters at Oxford gives him his doom’. William Wynn, who was privy to his master’s thoughts, more directly blamed ‘the malice of the duke towards him’.183 Hacket, ii. 22-3; C115/108/8632; CSP Ven. 1625-6, p. 198; ‘There was some policy I do believe’, Early Stuart Libels online, lines 101-12; NLW, 9060E/1376; Strafforde Letters (1739) ed. W. Knowler, i. 28.

Disgrace and attempts at rehabilitation, 1626-9

Williams retired to his palace at Buckden, Huntingdonshire, stoically making light of ‘this late accident befallen unto me’ in a letter to Sir John Wynn; ‘if he erred’, pronounced the earl of Clare, ‘it was in the idolatry of this man’ [i.e. Buckingham].184 Procs. Camb. Antiq. Soc. (1860-4), ii. 59; Holles Letters (Thoroton Soc. xxxv), 311. Among those who did not lament his fall was his rival William Laud. Having been advised that Williams had harmed his prospects with Buckingham in 1623-4, Laud ensured that Williams did not return to favour with the duke,185 Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 136-7, 143-5, 198-9, 204; Hacket, ii. 19. who rebuffed his pleas for access to the king. Moreover, when, in January 1626, Williams returned to Westminster amid preparations for the coronation, he found himself excluded from the ceremonies, though he himself should have officiated as dean. Instead, Laud took his place, while Richard Senhouse^*, bishop of Carlisle, preached the sermon. A mortified Williams insisted that his removal had been ‘no disfavour at all’, claimed to regret ‘any unworthy unfaithfulness’ he had previously shown the duke, and promised ‘all service for the time to come’.186 Hacket, ii. 4; Cabala (1654), 107; Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 178-9; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 627; RICHARD SENHOUSE.

Dismissal naturally diminished Williams’ electoral patronage. During the elections to the 1626 Parliament the former lord keeper had no influence in north Wales. However, at Boston, William Boswell (who had left his service) was replaced by his secretary Richard Oakeley^‡.187 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 232; iii. 259; v. 549. As commanded, Williams stayed away from the session, which met immediately after the coronation.188 Russell, 285 wrongly states that Williams attended the Lords on 23 March. See Procs. 1626, i. 200. However, on 6 Feb. 1626, the opening day, he asked the king for a writ of summons, so he might enter a proxy before leaving for Huntingdonshire. He also urged Charles not to believe complaints against him without hearing his defence, and vainly appealed to the king ‘to mitigate and allay the causeless displeasure of my lord duke against me’.189 Cabala (1654), 108-9; NLW, 9061E/1389. Nevertheless, a month later, Owen Wynn noted that nothing had been done about Williams’ writ, ‘neither do I hear that he shall come up at all, if the duke can hinder it’, and when the bishop arrived in Westminster to deliver his Lenten sermon at court, he was promptly sent back to his diocese.190 NLW, 9061E/1395; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 203.

A rumour that Buckingham eventually procured Williams his writ seems to have originated with a letter written by Williams to the Lords refuting a fresh complaint by Timothy Pinkney. In this he stated he was willing to attend the House to explain his Chancery verdict against his accuser. In fact, this alarming prospect spurred the duke to move ‘not to press the bishop any more’, for fear that he would swell the ranks of his enemies in the Lords.191 Procs. 1626, i. 162-9; NLW, 9061E/1397. Several other dissatisfied Chancery litigants took advantage of Williams’ absence to file complaints against his rulings, while the Commons heard testimony that he had dismissed the claim of parliamentary privilege made by Sir Robert Howard^‡ after the latter was arrested by the court of High Commission in March 1625. However, he received no censure for his actions, and near the end of the session he was allowed parliamentary privilege to quash an inhibition against one of his diocesan courts.192 Procs. 1626, i. 180-1, 213-14, 257, 262-3, 395, 540-1, 609-11; iii. 141-2, 148-51; Holles Letters (Thoroton Soc. xxxv), 325.

In the aftermath of the dissolution of 15 June 1626, Welsh sources incorrectly reported that Williams was summoned to court to answer the charge that he had supported Thomas Howard^*, 1st earl of Berkshire as a rival to Buckingham during the recent election for the chancellorship of Cambridge University; the duke’s victory had signalled his contempt for those critics who urged him to avoid impeachment by relinquishing some of his offices.193 NLW, 9061E/1420, which wrongly identifies the candidate as Berkshire’s heir Charles Howard^†, Viscount Andover, then aged 11. See also NLW, 9061E/1422; CUA, Lett.12.A1*; Lockyer, 325. In fact, Williams largely stayed at Buckden over the next 18 months, where the earl of Clare kept him informed about quarrels over the Forced Loan and the progress of the expedition to the Île de Ré. He also notified Williams of any rumours that suggested the bishop was about to be deprived of the deanery of Westminster, or kept under house arrest at Buckden. Williams responded to these by placating Buckingham with a lease of some of his Westminster estates, which the duke apparently resold for triple his entry fine.194 Holles Letters (Thoroton Soc. xxxv), 337-8, 340, 351-3, 356-7, 366-70; CSP Ven. 1626-8, pp. 93-4.

Following the summons of another Parliament in 1628, Williams did his best to return Buckingham’s nominee for a seat at Westminster, Sir Robert Pye, who had previously sat for the borough in 1626. The other candidate he backed as his own choice was Sir Robert Cotton^‡, 1st bt, whose library of printed books he coveted for the college. However, Pye’s dependence on the favourite, and his support for the Forced Loan, discredited both candidates, who were defeated by two vestrymen of St Margaret’s parish. The bishop had no more success at Boston, where Richard Oakeley was returned in a contested election, but then unseated by his rival, the Loan refuser Sir Anthony Irby^‡.195 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 232, 266-7; Merritt, 86.

Williams, like the other recalcitrants of 1626, received his writ of summons in 1628. The Venetian ambassador suggested that the intention was to create a constructive atmosphere at the start of the session.196 Birch, Chas. I, i. 330, 334; Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxvi), 379; CSP Ven. 1626-8, 45. Williams took his seat on 1 Apr., and thereafter attended almost all of the Lords’ sittings. Some weeks later, a newsletter-writer, assuming that Williams supported the liberties of the subject, reported that the bishop entered the House having first undertaken ‘that henceforward neither hope of greater preferments, nor fear of the loss of what he presently enjoyed, should make him do or speak against his conscience’. However, most of Williams’ speeches demonstrate a willingness to co-operate with Buckingham, and a reluctance to permit fresh constraints on the prerogative.197 Birch, Chas. I, i. 347. There is no evidence that Williams was offered any preferment in return, but it is possible that the duke held out the prospect of the see of York, vacated by the long-anticipated death of Archbishop Matthew on 28 Mar. 1628. However, any such hopes were dashed on 4 June, when the king issued letters missive for the appointment of George Montaigne (then bishop of London, and bishop-elect of Durham), by which time the Petition of Right had been agreed. Of course, Williams might have considered the vacancy at London an acceptable recompense for his services, but Charles had promised this to Bishop Laud of Bath and Wells a year earlier.198 TOBIE MATTHEW; Fasti, iv. 2; Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 205. For a different interpretation of Williams’ motivation during the 1628 Parliament, see Parry thesis, 196-8.

Whatever his motivation may have been, throughout the session Williams sought to reconcile the differences which had arisen between crown and subject, and generally assisted the duke’s efforts to this end. On 2 Apr., in a debate about the misdeeds of troops billeted in Banbury, Oxfordshire, the bishop agreed with Buckingham that neither the soldiers nor the local magistrate should be blamed. However, according to the notes written by the clerk at the time, he urged that ‘soldiers should be governed secundum legem terrae’ [according to the laws of the land] and not by martial law, which is less likely to have pleased the favourite.199 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 141-2. The ms Journal, written up later, is more equivocal in its language, see ibid. 139-40. On 5 Apr. Williams preached at the Lords’ corporate communion, held in his own church, offering a textual exegesis devoid of polemic, save for a modest barb directed against the Arminians.200 J. Williams, A Sermon Preached in the Collegiate Church of S. Peter in Westminster (1628), 31; Lords Procs. 1628, p. 157.

The issue which dominated the session was the dispute over how to maintain the liberties of the subject against the powers of detention without cause shown, claimed by the crown in the Five Knights’ case. The Commons rehearsed their arguments against the crown at a conference on 7 Apr., at which Williams was one of those assigned to report their findings to the Lords. Recounting the complex arguments made by the eminent jurist and MP Sir Edward Coke^‡, he confessed his pen had not been fast enough to record all of the latter’s speech, using his memory where his notes failed him.201 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 157, 174-9, 181-5. With the king calling for swift passage of the bill for five subsidies MPs had promptly voted in principle, the Lords began their consideration of the Commons’ case against arbitrary imprisonment on 12 Apr., when Attorney General Sir Robert Heath^‡ justified his arguments in the Five Knights’ case. Amid calls for the judges to explain their decision to remand the defendants, Williams, fearing ‘extremities not easily reconciled’ at the next conference with the Commons, moved that the Lords hear and exonerate the judges beforehand, and called for an explanation of the king’s intentions. His meaning was presumably that Charles should be approached to give the judges permission to speak.202 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 205, 207; Russell, 360-1. Two days later, Chief Justice Sir Nicholas Hyde^‡ appealed for royal permission to explain his ruling. Buckingham assured the House of the king’s agreement, but admitted this did not constitute formal permission, whereupon Williams intervened in support of the duke. Alluding to precedents that previous lords chancellor had been required by Parliament to justify their decrees, he argued that the same principle should also apply to the common law judges. The judges eventually explained that their order to remand the prisoners had been merely an interim ruling, rendered moot by the Council’s order to release the defendants during the Christmas vacation of 1627-8.203 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 218-19, 224-5, 233-4; J. Guy, ‘Origins of the Petition of Right Reconsidered’, HJ, xxv. 292–6; M. Kishlansky, ‘Tyranny Denied: Chas. I, Att. Gen. Heath and the Five Knights’ Case’, HJ, xlii. 60–3; C. Brooks, Law, Pols. and Soc. in Early Modern Eng. 269–72.

The revelation that the judges had not fully endorsed the prerogative threw the spotlight back onto Attorney General Heath, who was interrupted while explaining his case to the Commons on 16 Apr. by William Cavendish^*, 2nd earl of Devonshire. The latter claimed that Heath had omitted some of the arguments included in the brief he had presented to the Lords. Devonshire’s intervention was criticized in the Lords on the following morning for speaking at the conference without order, but Buckingham, seconded by Williams, successfully moved for a message that MPs should bring their 1621 Journal to the next conference, so their case against arbitrary imprisonment might be accurately referenced. On 19 Apr., despite apologies for his lack of legal training, Williams gave a coherent report from these conferences on the Commons’ case against arbitrary imprisonment, adding further details two days later.204 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 255, 258, 284-92, 302, 311-12, 314-15; WILLIAM CAVENDISH, 2ND EARL OF DEVONSHIRE. This prompted a debate on how to allay the fears of the lower House over the violation of the subject’s rights in the Five Knights’ case. On 22 Apr. Williams urged that a formal note be made of Heath’s admission that Magna Carta was still in force, and asked whether peers agreed with the Commons’ call to have the ancient statute confirmed. He subsequently joined Arundel in urging that, while the crown might not ‘commit forever without cause’, the Privy Council might be afforded some temporary leeway. On 23 Apr. the bishop was included on the committee ordered to draft proposals the Lords intended to put to the Commons, which presently agreed that the king should confirm Magna Carta and six other statutes, and undertake to govern according to the law in future.205 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 312, 315-16, 320-1, 326, 328, 330-1; Russell, 370-1; J.S. Flemion, ‘A Savings to Satisfy All’, PH, x. 33-5.

The offer of a statute to confirm Magna Carta was quickly rejected by MPs in favour of a Petition of Right, which was sent to the Lords on 8 May. The first objection raised to the Commons’ draft was that it included a catalogue of the laws breached by the Forced Loan. However, Williams was prepared to endorse this wording, insisting that the preambles to statutes and commissions habitually justified their enactment, and merely asking that the text might be couched in ‘the greatest sweetness’. The Lords concluded that this could best be accomplished by redrafting the text, and Williams was subsequently included on the committee established for this purpose.206 Russell, 367-71; Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 400-3. On 12 May the king declared that he would not accept any diminution of his prerogative, but agreed not to imprison Loan refusers in future, whereupon Buckingham and William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke persuaded the Lords to ask the Commons to revise their draft. However, the following morning William Grey^*, 1st Lord Grey of Warke, who had left the chamber before this was agreed, moved for the scheduled debate on the estate bill for Henry Neville^*, 9th or 2nd Lord Abergavenny. When Buckingham called Grey to order, it was Williams who helped to dissipate the ensuing tension.207 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 415-16; Russell, 372; WILLIAM GREY.

With the debate on the Petition thus able to continue, on 14 May Pembroke reported the Lords’ new draft, shorn of the preamble. Although Williams and others offered minor amendments, the Commons declined the proffered compromise. Williams subsequently urged the Lords to debate each point of the Petition in detail at a further conference, but the Commons remained unpersuaded, whereupon he moved the upper House to provide some safeguard for the prerogative without following the precise wording of the king’s letter.208 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 424-9, 435; Russell, 372. Williams was therefore included on the committee ordered to make a fresh draft of the Petition. On the following morning Arundel moved for some addition to the Commons’ text, which Williams enlarged upon, proposing a saving clause that the Petition ‘shall not bind the king, nor deny him his own prerogative’. Williams developed his formula in committee on 16 May, together with a recommendation about the form of words the king might use in his answer. Buckingham reported the bishop’s wording to the Lords on the following day, when Williams also moved that any man forced to sue a second habeas corpus while subject to arbitrary imprisonment should automatically be granted bail.209 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 421, 438-42, 447, 452-7; Russell, 372-3. The saving clause was subsequently sent to the Commons in a modified form, but while the Lords awaited an answer, Edward Sackville^*, 4th earl of Dorset and Williams moved that if MPs accepted this rider to the Petition, other minor alterations the peers had sought could be dispensed with. In fact, the Commons questioned many of the Lords’ alterations. Over the following days, amid calls from the king for a swift decision, Williams and others mounted a frantic search for a form of words which might prove acceptable to the lower House. On 23 May Arundel moved for another conference with the Commons. Williams replied that the time was not yet ripe, but he grudgingly agreed to put the saving clause to the test, and was followed by Buckingham, Abbot and many others.210 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 461-6, 476-7, 479-84, 490-6, 509-13; Russell, 373.

The Commons’ rejection of the saving clause left the Lords in a quandary over how to proceed. Amid a heated debate, Arundel and Bristol moved that the Petition be passed, but a protestation be entered in the Journal noting that it had been approved with a saving for the prerogative, in line with Charles’s letter of 12 May. Buckingham signified his assent, and Williams then summarized the motion; the earlier committee for redrafting the Petition, of which Williams was a member, agreed a text for the protestation, which was entered in the official record.211 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 523-5; Russell, 373-4. However, on 2 June the king derailed this agreement with a response which the Commons found entirely unacceptable. Four days later, when Charles assured the Lords he had resolved not to dissolve the session, Williams, amid calls for a remonstrance, asked the privy councillors present to inform the king that they would find an accommodation with the Commons. Plans for a reconciliation matured overnight, as on the next morning Bishop Harsnett moved to ask the king for a fresh answer; Williams seconded him, observing that the first answer made no direct reference to the Petition at all, and the two men were joined with Arundel and Bristol to draft a message to the king. The Commons indicated their approval at a conference, and Charles then granted his assent in a satisfactory form.212 Lords’ Procs. 1628, pp. 590-2, 598, 600-3; Russell, 377-83.

With the key issue of liberty of the subject resolved, the Lords moved on to consider the backlog of other business. The most important item on the ecclesiastical agenda was the investigation of Dr Roger Manwaring^†, rector of St Giles-in-the-Fields, Middlesex (later bishop of St Davids), for a sermon in favour of the Forced Loan he had first delivered in 1627, then repeated during the parliamentary session. Williams was one of those ordered to examine witnesses (including several MPs) on 10 June. On the following day he attacked Manwaring for his absolutist views, urging that he be dealt with before the end of the session, lest his crimes taint the passage of the Petition. It emerged that the sermon had been licensed for print by the ailing George Montaigne^* (as bishop of London), and consequently, on 12 June, Williams and Robert Devereux^*, 3rd earl of Essex were sent to examine Montaigne on his sickbed.213 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 621-3. Manwaring’s defence, on 13 June, enraged Archbishop Abbot, who gave the hapless cleric a verbal flaying, but Williams, having earlier promised to show mercy to Manwaring, observed that the sermon had been written in response to an episcopal circular encouraging obedience to royal commands. Nevertheless, he urged that Manwaring’s sermons be burned, that he be degraded from his degrees, and that he be fined at least £1,000 as an example to others, ‘that when they should preach Christ crucified they preach not their own preferments’. This was a milder punishment that the sentence ultimately awarded.214 Ibid. 636, 638. These two reports do not entirely agree. During the hearings against Manwaring, Bishop Montaigne revealed to Williams that Laud had procured the king’s order to print the accused’s controversial sermon about the Forced Loan. As he was only carrying out the king’s orders, Laud was naturally exonerated, but the two men subsequently treated each other with frosty politeness.215 Ibid. 642; Procs. 1628, 116-17; Works of Abp. Laud, iii. 207-8.

During Manwaring’s trial, the Commons reported their discovery of a commission sealed on 29 Feb. 1628 – at which time the summons of the Parliament had hung in the balance – which ordered the raising of fresh revenues without parliamentary approval, including excises on salt and beer. When the Lords were informed about this commission on 16 June, Williams made light of it: ‘it is not an act, but a predisposition or a preparation to an act against the liberties of the subject’. However, he supported calls to discover who had drafted it, ‘not only for the iniquity of the fact, but for the folly of the counsel’, and was one of five peers ordered to draft a petition asking the king to cancel this commission.216 CD 1628, iv. 241-2; Birch, Chas. I, i. 327; R. Cust, Forced Loan, 76-7; Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 646, 648-9. Three days before the end of the session, Williams and two other members of the committee for the bill to confirm the settlement of the Henrietta Maria’s jointure estates called for it to have a third reading, but the queen’s councillors explained that it was judged defective, and should be laid aside.217 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 641, 689, 691-2.

In the aftermath of the 1628 session, Buckingham made overtures to the Spanish party at court. Weston apparently brought Williams to a private interview with Charles, but despite his helpfulness during the session, the bishop does not appear to have been offered any form of preferment, either before or after the duke’s assassination.218 Hacket, ii. 114.

Williams returned to Westminster for the 1629 parliamentary session, but with the focus on the Commons’ investigations of the customs farmers, Catholics and Arminians, there was relatively little for the Lords to do. For the first time, Williams was included on the standing committees for privileges and petitions, and on 5 Feb. he reported a petition from John Glanville^‡ about the right of presentation to a Devon vicarage, which had been usurped by another claimant.219 LJ, iv. 6a-b, 21a-2a. He also preached the fast day sermon to the Lords, which took place at his church on 18 February.220 Ibid. 24a, 34a.

Churchmanship and its challenges 1627-37

Although he had received an orthodox Calvinist education at St John’s, Cambridge – Hacket claimed that Williams wrote tracts on predestination, although they do not survive – the bishop was attracted to ceremonial in worship: the altar of his private chapel was apparently garnished with ‘plate and ornaments’, and he was keen on liturgical music. (In 1636, the papal nuncio even thought it worthwhile to offer him, as well as Laud, a cardinal’s hat).221 Hajzyk, 102, 105. However, though he was now wealthy – he enjoyed an annual income of nearly £2,000 from rigorously managed diocesan estates, perhaps as much again from the keepership, and maybe £500 a year from Westminster - he lacked a family, and gave away much of his fortune in charitable bequests.222 A detailed list is given in Birch, Chas. I, ii. 196. During the 1620s, for instance, he donated nearly £2,000 towards the construction of a new library range at his old college of St John’s, Cambridge.223 Hajzyk, 138-41; St. John’s Coll., Camb. ed. P. Linehan, 103-7; Stowe 743, f. 52v; The Eagle, xvii. 3-15, 142, 148-9, 345-52; xxiii. 20; Procs. Camb. Antiq. Soc. (1860-4), ii. 50-5; Hacket, ii. 34. He also endowed two fellowships and four scholarships (although underfunding meant that the scholarships were wound up after the Restoration), and parts of his library were ultimately bequeathed to the college.224 Hajzyk, 138-41; St John’s Coll., Camb. ed. P. Linehan, 103-7; Stowe 743, f. 52v; The Eagle, xvii. 3-15, 142, 148-9, 345-52; xxiii. 20; Procs. Camb. Antiq. Soc. (1860-4), ii. 50-5; Hacket, ii. 34. At Lincoln College, Oxford, where Williams was visitor, he provided funds to build part of a second quadrangle and a new chapel, consecrated in 1631, which offered an alternative to the Laudian concept of the beauty of holiness.225 V. Green, Commonwealth of Lincoln Coll. 165-9; Hacket, ii. 35; K. Fincham and N. Tyacke, Altars Restored, 186. He also offered bursaries to poor scholars, and maintained a school for young noblemen and gentlemen in his palace at Buckden.226 Hacket, i. 201; ii. 36.

For all his Calvinism, Williams did not share Archbishop Abbot’s hostility to the anti-Calvinist theology of Richard Montagu^* (later bishop of Chichester). Presented with a manuscript copy of Montagu’s refutation of his puritan critics in the autumn of 1624, Williams did not find time to read it, even after controversy erupted over Montagu’s views in the 1625 Parliament.227 Cosin Corresp. ed. G. Ornsby (Surtees Soc. lii), 22-3, 80; RICHARD MONTAGU. Williams did not comfortably fit the Calvinist model of a diocesan pastor, despite Hacket’s attempt to persuade his readers otherwise. As bishop of Lincoln, he did not even set foot in his see until after his removal as lord keeper. In the meantime, William Boswell, his diocesan secretary and receiver general, kept him in touch with administrative matters, and conducted his 1625 visitation in tandem with the diocesan chancellor, John Farmery.228 Hacket, i. 85-6; ii. 38-43; Hajzyk, 102, 117-18.

As bishop, and as lord keeper, Williams generally allowed puritans a degree of latitude in their conformity, provided they showed respect for authority. Thus, while he vetoed a petition from some Bohemian miners to establish a community in England, with their own separatist church, he persuaded Bishop Harsnett to drop proceedings against Dr Samuel Ward, the town preacher of Ipswich, judging him ‘to be won easily with fair dealing’. Similarly, in 1627 Williams ordered the officials of Leicester archdeaconry to drop a charge against the wife of Sir William Heyricke^‡, on the grounds that ‘she is not, unprovoked, any way averse to our courses or government’.229 Hacket, i. 95-6; HP Commons 1604-29, iv. 687; SP16/95/40; Hajzyk, 108, 123-4; L. Purola, ‘Bp. John Williams and the Dioc. of Lincoln, 1621-41’ (Rutgers Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 265-7. In the 1630s, Williams noted remarkably little nonconformity in his annual reports to Laud, whose own network of informants provided evidence of a much higher level of heterodox practice. In 1628 Laud had the eccentric puritan John Vicars, vicar of St Mary’s, Stamford, cited into High Commission for divisive preaching.230 Hajzyk, 107-10, 135-6, 292-3, 297. It was only when Laud cited John Cotton of Boston into the court of High Commission that the controversial cleric, having enjoyed Williams’ tacit support for years, decided to emigrate to New England.231 Corresp. of John Cotton, 101-3, 179-80; Hajzyk, 133-4, 292.

Although he turned a blind eye to the Arminian community established at Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire in the 1620s by Laud’s protégés John^‡ and Nicholas Ferrar^‡,232 Hajzyk, 103; HP Commons 1604-29, iv. 246-7. Williams found that his chief problem during the 1630s was the increasingly open hostility of Laud. From the time of his promotion to the bishopric of London in 1628, Laud was one of the king’s chief advisors on ecclesiastical matters, whose views on conformity, especially with regard to the suppression of Calvinist preaching and the positioning and railing of altars, were promulgated throughout the Church by his allies. Williams, in charge of the largest diocese in the country, ostentatiously defied such injunctions, and, as a result, Laud set out to make an example of him. He found allies among the lawyers who ran the diocesan courts, particularly Sir John Lambe and Chancellor Farmery, but their administrative rivals naturally gravitated towards Williams, and the diocese became polarized between the two camps.233 Purola, 103-4, 113; Hajzyk, 114-32; Hacket, ii. 111-14. The trouble began in Leicestershire, where Lambe was commissary to both the bishop and his archdeacon: in 1627-9, one of Lambe’s protégés, a proctor of the local court, was forced out of office after a dispute with the court’s registrar, John Prigeon; and in 1631-2, when Williams took advantage of a technical flaw in Lambe’s patent to replace him as commissary, the latter took revenge on Thomas Pestell, one of his replacement’s deputies, who was humiliated before High Commission for a series of minor offences.234 C. Holmes, ‘Law and pols. in the reign of Chas. I’, Jnl. of Legal Hist. xxviii. 163-6; C. Haigh, ‘Troubles of Thomas Pestell’, JBS, xli. 403-28; Birch, Chas. I, ii. 171; C115/106/8393. At the same time, Lambe and Williams openly clashed over enforcement of the king’s Book of Sports.235 Purola, 269-70.

The most serious dispute between Laud and Williams arose from a ruling of 1627, when a new vicar provoked controversy at Grantham, Lincolnshire by positioning the communion table altarwise at the east end of the chancel. Williams intervened with an order that the table be stored laterally along the chancel, and removed elsewhere for communion. Although Laud had provoked controversy over this issue at Gloucester Cathedral as early as 1616, Williams could not know that altars would later become the touchstone of ecclesiastical policy after Laud’s promotion to Canterbury. Manuscript copies of Williams’ Grantham ruling circulated among Laud’s critics, and even after 1633 Williams doggedly refused to implement the new altar policy, publishing an anonymous but aggressive defence of his ruling, The Holy Table, Name and Thing, in 1637.236 Fincham and Tyacke, 177-81; Hajzyk, 110-14; Purola, 272-4; MILES SMITH; Heylyn, 170-1; [J. Williams], The Holy Table, Name and Thing (1637).

Long before this, Williams faced a barrage of criticism, much of which can be traced to Laud’s machinations. The dispute started in 1626 with complaints that the bishop had shown excessive leniency to nonconformist ministers. Two years later, Williams unwisely discussed royal policy towards nonconformists in a conversation with Sir John Lambe, which was reported to the Privy Council in December 1631, and formed the basis of a Star Chamber suit against Williams.237 Purola, 293-6; Holmes, 166-7; SP16/95/40. The partisan nature of Lambe’s complaint was obvious, and it was almost a year before Attorney General William Noye^‡ (who had earlier benefited from Williams’ patronage) filed a bill accusing the bishop of ‘spreading false news and rumours … disclosing secrets out of Council, and with extortion in some things while he was lord keeper’. Williams, meanwhile, assembled a group of witnesses who asserted that Lambe’s version of this exchange was mistaken, and delayed the proceedings in the hope that a political solution might be found. However, in 1633 Registrar Prigeon, one of the key witnesses to Williams’ conversation with Lambe, was accused of fathering a bastard, which cast doubt upon the reliability of his testimony before Star Chamber. After lengthy proceedings, Prigeon was exonerated by a ruling in King’s Bench.238 Birch, Chas. I, ii. 188, 195-7; C115/105/8149; 115/106/8437; Purola, 296-8; Holmes, 167-78, 180. The Star Chamber case against Williams thus lost momentum, while a second case, about Williams’ mismanagement of Westminster Abbey, filed by Laud’s devoted supporter Peter Heylyn and three other Westminster prebends, also stalled.239 Purola, 298-9; C115/109/8853. However, the death of Noye in August 1634, and his replacement as attorney general by John Bankes^‡, allowed Laud to involve the unprincipled ecclesiastical lawyer Richard Kilvert in the Star Chamber case. Kilvert accused the bishop of offering to sell him the office of registrar for £200, and charges of subornation of perjury were added.240 Purola, 299-300; Holmes, 178-9, 181; C115/106/8445, 8448; 115/109/8853, 8855; Bodl., Carte 77, f. 418; Strafforde Letters, i. 490. Proceedings were suspended when Williams offered to buy a pardon for £8,000, but resumed when he refused to surrender the deanery of Westminster as part of the settlement; Heylyn’s suit was now revived, with additional charges.241 C115/108/8580; Strafforde Letters, i. 506, 511; Birch, Chas. I, ii. 243; Purola, 300-1.

Early in 1637, Williams damaged his credit with the king by becoming involved in a Ship Money dispute at Buckden, where complaint was made that he refused to allow his demesne lands to be charged with part of the town’s rate.242 CSP Dom. 1636-7, 243-4, 344, 348; PC2/47, f. 28; Birch, Chas. I, ii. 267-8, 276-8; Purola, 301-3. The appearance of his book on the altar policy that Easter added fuel to the fire, even though the volume was acknowledged to be ‘witty and tart in a neat and smooth style’, and in July 1637 the Star Chamber case resulted in a formal trial, with Laud presiding. Williams’ fate was sealed by Kilvert’s evidence that he had attempted to tamper with witnesses who testified against both Prigeon and himself: the bishop was fined £10,000 and committed to the Tower during pleasure, as a result of which High Commission suspended him from his ecclesiastical functions.243 C115/108/8612, 8616; 115/109/8806; Holles Letters (Thoroton Soc. xxxvi), 496, 500, 503-4; SP16/361/92; 16/362/32, 76; 16/363/42, 119; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent., U269/1/CB139 (Lowe to Cranfield, 12 July 1637); CSP Ven. 1636-9, 242, 245-6, 304; Purola, 303-4; Holmes, 179. Williams’ estates were sequestrated by his enemies, while administration of his diocese was assumed by Laud’s appointees, among them Richard Kilvert, who allegedly embezzled some of the bishop’s estate himself. Further charges were pursued, and after Kilvert discovered seditious letters Williams had received, which mocked Archbishop Laud, Williams was ordered to pay a further £5,000 to the crown and £3,000 to Laud. Offered his freedom if he would surrender his existing preferments in favour of an Irish bishopric, he refused, and languished in the Tower for three years.244 Purola, 304-13; Holmes, 179-80; C115/108/8618, 8619, 8625; Add. 4275, ff. 58-9; Strafforde Letters, ii. 149-50, 181-2.

Later years, 1640-50

Released from his incarceration in November 1640, just as Laud was imprisoned, Williams was politically rehabilitated in the improbable form of a puritan martyr. His status as one of Laud’s principal victims gave him some standing in the Long Parliament, which he used to win royal favour by advocating ‘reduced episcopacy’ as an alternative to radical plans for ‘Root and Branch’ reform of the Church. As archbishop of York from December 1641, Williams led the bishops’ protest against the mob violence which denied them access to the House of Lords. The protestors’ formal exclusion from the House confirmed Williams’ royalist sympathies; during the Civil War he held Conway Castle for the king, then his own manor of Penrhyn. He spent his final years living with the Wynns and their relatives. Dying at Gloddaeth, Caernarvonshire on 25 Mar. 1650, he was buried at Llandygai, the parish church of his Penrhyn estate. Those of his lands which remained in his possession passed to his nephew Sir Griffith Williams, whose heir Robert sat in the Commons for Caernarvonshire (1656) and Caernarvon Boroughs (1659).245 Purola, 314-18; Hacket, ii. 228.