YOUNG, John (1531/4-1605)

A native of the London parish of St Magnus the Martyr, Young, educated at the Mercers’ school, was probably the son of a freeman, and presumably related to the Fishmongers Robert Young of St Mary at Hill, London (d.1577) and William Young of St Magnus the Martyr (d.1590/2).20 GL, DL/AL/C/002/MS09051/004, f. 108; PROB11/79, ff. 171v-2v. After proceeding BA at Cambridge in 1552, he secured a fellowship at Pembroke Hall in 1553; he conformed to the Catholic Church under Mary, and was awarded his MA in 1555. However, early in Elizabeth’s reign he enjoyed the patronage of a former master of Pembroke, Edmund Grindal^†, then bishop of London, becoming an episcopal chaplain, rector of St Martin Ludgate in 1563, and a prebend of St Paul’s in the following year. His grandson also recalled him as having been vicar of St Giles without Cripplegate, which is not recorded elsewhere; he may have held a curacy there at the start of his career. Clearly regarded as a safe pair of hands, Young was collated as rector of St Magnus in 1566, after Miles Coverdale resigned at the height of the Vestiarian controversy. He also became master of Pembroke in the following year, when the incumbent, John Whitgift^* (later archbishop of Canterbury) transferred to Trinity College.21 Al. Cant.; Oxford DNB, lx. 914; P. Collinson, Eliz. Puritan Movement, 71-97.

Despite his early links with Grindal, and Aylmer’s claim that he was opposed to innovation, Young apparently permitted a sceptical attitude towards Calvinist doctrine to flourish at Pembroke. His most important protégé was Lancelot Andrewes^* (later bishop of Winchester). A student at Pembroke Hall during Young’s time as master, Andrewes became head of house in 1589, in which year he also took over Young’s prebend at Southwell Minster. Young’s only published sermon, preached at court in 1576, suggests that its author taught Andrewes to use the Greek Septuagint as well as the Latin Vulgate in textual analysis of the bible. Its style was certainly echoed in his pupil’s sermons. Young was also the bishop who ordained the Oxford anti-Calvinist William Laud^* (later archbishop of Canterbury) as deacon and priest in 1600-1.22 P.E. McCullough, Sermons at Ct. (suppl. cal. 24); J. Young, A Sermon Preached before the Queenes Maiestie (1576); CPR, 1588-9 ed. S.R. Neal (L. and I. Soc. ccc), 64; Works of Abp. Laud ed. J. Bliss, iii. 131. However, another of his students, Edmund Spenser (whom he appointed as his secretary at Rochester in 1578) was of a very different opinion.23 Judson, 3, 20-3.

Young spent much of his tenure as master away from Cambridge, possibly with Grindal, then bishop of London. However, he owed his consecration as bishop of Rochester in 1578 to the conformist reaction which followed Grindal’s suspension from the archbishopric of Canterbury. Indeed, John Aylmer^†, bishop of London, described him at the time as ‘fit to bridle innovators’. His earliest biographical notice claimed he ‘desired not to remove’ from the see, but he actually made persistent efforts to secure further preferment, all unsuccessful, as he remained in post until his death 27 years later.24 Collinson, 201, 249-51; Oxford DNB, lx. 915-16. The bishopric of Rochester was, as Young complained in his will, worth little over £300 a year. However, his income was augmented by the living at St Magnus (valued at £109 p.a. in the early 1630s) and a prebend at Westminster Abbey, both of which he held in commendam, and he resigned St Magnus in 1592 only in order to take up a fresh living in his own diocese, at Wouldham, Kent, which he reckoned to be of equal value. Finally, his wife (the couple probably married shortly after his appointment to Rochester) brought him a jointure estate in Cambridgeshire and Essex from her first husband, Thomas Watts, archdeacon of Middlesex, another former Pembroke alumnus.25 Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc., vi. 56; Newcourt, i. 396; PROB 11/108, f. 384; CCEd; J. Harington, Briefe View of the State of the Church of England (1608), 147; PROB 11/59, ff. 238v-40v; A. Attwater, Short Hist. of Pemb. Coll. Camb. 49-50.

Although widely touted as a candidate for promotion in the 1580s, Young turned down the bishopric of Norwich in 1594, and by the time of James I’s accession in 1603 he was far too old to have any realistic chance of further preferment.26 Judson, 26, 28, 30; B. Usher, Ld. Burghley and Episcopacy, 1577-1603, pp. 61-2, 74-7, 84-7, 132-3. However, he was clearly not decrepit, as he attended the Lords on almost every day of the 1604 session, and held a share in the proxy of William Overton^*, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. On 19 Apr. he was included on the delegation ordered to attend two conferences with the Commons about ecclesiastical reform, an initiative which ended abruptly when Convocation complained that MPs were trying to impeach their jurisdiction over the Church. He was also ordered to attend another conference to hear the Commons’ complaints about a tract by John Thornborough^*, bishop of Bristol, which attacked MPs for their obstructive attitude towards the king’s proposals for Union with Scotland.27 LJ, ii. 263a, 282b, 309a; RICHARD BANCROFT. Young was included on committees to consider two drafts of the witchcraft bill, two drafts of the recusancy bill, and two drafts of a bill to prevent the import of ‘seditious, popish, vain and lascivious books’. His remaining appointments concerned bills to regulate process in the ecclesiastical courts, and to confirm the assignment of a lease of one of the manors of Westminster Abbey.28 LJ, ii. 269a, 275a, 290a, 301b, 311a, 313b, 323a, 324b.

In his will of 13 Mar. 1605, Young acknowledged himself to be ‘sick and diseased in body’. He assigned ‘a liberal expense’ for his funeral, and left his wife the plate she had brought him from her first husband, and as many of his household goods as she required for her own use; the rest went to his son John, who was appointed executor. Two Rochester Cathedral officials were appointed as overseers, and the will was witnessed the following day. Young died on 10 Apr., being buried, as he had requested, at Bromley, Kent, the parish in which his episcopal palace lay. His son proved the will on 22 Nov. 1606.29 PROB 11/108, f. 384; T. Fuller, Church Hist. of Eng. (1655), x. 39; Oxford DNB, lx. 916.