A False Start: The First Session of the Conference at Hampton Court. Part II

The Arrival of the Four Ministers

The postponement of its opening from January 12 to January 14 is not the only sign of confusion in the planning of the conference at Hampton Court. It is worth remembering before moving on to the other sign of confusion that no order papers, agendas, or minutes of this conference have survived, so that it is not possible to know what King James had planned for it. The first part of this paper showed that it is not even clear just when the conference was supposed to begin. In the second part it emerges that the participants do not seem to have been summoned for the same day, and that the disruption of events on the 12th continued on Saturday the 14th.
William Barlow reports that when he and the other deans returned to the Presence Chamber with the bishops on Saturday morning January 14,

there we found sitting upon a form, Doctor Rainolds, Doctor Sparks; Master Knewstubs, and Master Chaderton, agents for the Millenary Plaintiffs. The bishops entering the Privy-Chamber, stayed there, till commandment came from his Majesty that none of any sort should be present, but only the Lords of the Privy Council, and the Bishops with five Deans, viz. of the Chapel, Westminster, Paul’s, Westchester,[1] Salisbury, who being called in, the door was close shut by my Lord Chamberlain. [2]

There are several points of interest in Barlow’s description. First, the day appointed for the beginning of the conference was Thursday January 12th. Only the bishops and deans came to the palace that day. [3] Second, when the bishops and deans returned on Saturday morning, they found the four ministers, who had not been there on Thursday, waiting in the Presence Chamber. Third, the bishops immediately went into the Privy Chamber, apparently leaving the deans. Tobie Matthew adds that the bishops were sent for by the king “into an inner withdrawing chamber.” Matthew’s statement seems to imply that the bishops were so summoned after they withdrew from the other clergy, but this is not entirely clear. It does not help the interpretation of events that Matthew never mentions the deans [4] After a short while word came that the King would meet with the bishops and five deans in the presence of the lords of the privy council, the five deans were called in, the door was shut by the Lord Chamberlain and the conference began. At the end of the session, Monday was appointed for the ministers to “bring in their complaints”; the anonymous Harleian account states that “The Lord Chancellor called for Doctor Reynolds and those that were seekers of reformation, and appointed them to attend there on Monday.”
Only Barlow mentions that the four ministers were in the Presence Chamber on 14th, though the Harleian account implies as much. However, while Barlow’s account has been called partial and unreliable, this detail has not been questioned. Indeed, Laurence Chaderton, whose annotated copy of Barlow has been studied by Arnold Hunt, objected that Barlow at this point called the four "agents for the millenary plaintiffs," but not that he said they at the palace but left out of the meeting on Saturday morning..[5] There does not seem to be any reason why Barlow should have invented this detail.
The question that arises is for what day the four ministers were invited to meet with the king. Thursday January 12th was the day appointed for the conference; if they had been summoned for that day, why did they not come that day? If they had been summoned to come on Saturday January 14th, why were they left out of the meeting on that day?
It seems likely that the conference had been meant to begin on the 12th with a meeting of the king with the bishops in the presence of the Privy Council, and continue with a meeting with the four ministers on the 14th. As was suggested in the first part of the paper, however, this schedule was disarranged at the last minute in order to give a banquet for the ambassador from Savoy. The change seems to have been made so late that the bishops had only heard a rumour of the postponement before they came to present themselves at the appointed time. It is reasonable to suppose that the four ministers were also not informed of this sudden change, and came when they were supposed to, only to find that they were not yet wanted. This avoids Peter White’s suggestion that the four ministers were left out of the session as a "deliberate snub."[6] It might indeed have been taken as a snub, but not meant as such.
Roland Usher may well have been right to describe the incident as tense and awkward, and possibly “watched … with glee by the court gossips,” [7] but no comment of the court gossips has survived. After describing the first day’s session Dudley Carleton simply says that the ministers will have their turn on Monday and adds that that the “two companies as they differ in opinions so do they in fashions, for one side marches in gowns and rochets, and the other in cloaks and Nightcaps.”[8]
The incident shows more that the conference was badly planned than that anyone wanted to snub the four ministers. This bad planning itself suggests that the conference at Hampton Court was not so much a grand event intended to allow the parties of the church to face off against each other as what the king said it was, a meeting of learned clergy “by whose information and advise we might govern our proceeding” if it was made clear that anything really did need reform in the Church. At the second session, on Monday January 16th, the four ministers did not have a debate with the prelates, but presented their case to the king himself, with the bishops and deans acting more as the king's assessors than the ministers' opponents. This point will come up again in a later discussion on this blog.

NOTES
[1] That is, Chester.
[2] Barlow Summe and Substance, 2-3.
[3] Barlow, 1; BL Harleian MS 828 (the “Anonymous Account”), folio 32, printed in Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church, ii.341ff; Tobie Matthew to Matthew Hutton, 19 January, 1603, printed in E. Cardwell, History of Conferences. 161-166.
[4] Barlow, as quoted above; Tobie Matthew,
[5] Arnold Hunt, "Laurence Chaderton and the Hampton Court Conference" in S. Wabuda and C. Litzenberger, Belief and Practice in Reformation England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 206-228, p. 212.
[6] White, Predestination, policy and polemic, p. 144.
[7] Usher Reconstruction of the English Church, i. 318-19
[8] Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, letter of 15 January 1604, SPD James I, 14/6/21 folio 55

A False Start: The First Session of the Conference at Hampton Court: Part I

Thursday, 12 January 1604: A Session Postponed

As is well-known, the conference at Hampton Court was originally to be held on November 1, 1603, but by reason of the plague, postponed until after Christmas, and finally began on January 14th, 1604. That was not, however, the new date that was set. There seems to have been a last-minute change and some confusion, which is reflected in reports that the bishops presented themselves for the conference on Thursday January 12th, and that when the four representatives of the puritans came on the 14th, they were left outside while the king met with his bishops and five deans of cathedrals. This present paper deals with the first of these facts; the arrival of the ministers will be dealt with in a second section.
The first postponement was proclaimed on October 24th.[1] It may be noted in passing that this proclamation is the earliest known public statement about the meeting. The proclamation did not set a new date, but it appears that by mid-December new invitations had been sent out, and the conference set for January 12th..[2] (King James was apparently not always concerned about giving timely notice of important changes. For example, he had decreed ordered on 17 December 1599 that January 1st next would be the first day of 1600.[3])
These postponements and changes help to explain the confusion and lack of order apparent in the planning of the Hampton Court Conference. Few modern narratives of the meetings give any idea of confusion, which tell us that the conference began on Saturday 14 January at nine in the morning, and omit any mention of the events of 12 January.[4]
On Thursday, 12 January 1604, the nine bishops who had been summoned, attended by the deans and doctors, appeared before the King, who spoke to them briefly and told them to come back on Saturday 14 January.[5] Only four of the contemporary accounts of the conference mention this, and there are some differences between them. Two of these accounts are by participants in the conference, Bishop Tobie Matthew, who wrote it up in a letter to the Archbishop of York the day after it ended, and William Barlow, the Dean of Chester, who was by the Archbishop of Canterbury to write a quasi-official account. Another is in a letter from Patrick Galloway a Minister who had accompanied King James from Scotland, to the Presbytery of Edinburgh. He is only reported to have attended one session of the conference, on Monday January 16. The third is in the anonymous account if the conference in the Harleian MSS. These reports differ on the details of what occurred that morning. Matthew and Barlow report that King James said that the day was in error, or had deceived him, and was supposed to be Saturday; the other two say nothing of an error, but present the meeting as if it had been planned.
Bishop Matthew gives a detailed report of the king’s private remarks to the bishops, that he said first, that they had been summoned "for the reformation of some things amiss in ecclesiastical matters, supposed," second of his desire that "Ireland might be reduced to the true knowledge of God, and true obedience"; and third "that the day was somewhat mistaken", and they were to return on Saturday.[6] It should be noted that Matthew does not mention that any of the deans were present, but also that he doesn’t mention them at points in the conference when all other accounts record that they were present. William Barlow reports little of the king’s remarks, but he gives more of the circumstances of the meeting. He says that the date had been set by proclamation and that the bishops, the deans and two doctors came to the palace at 9 a.m.,

though the night before, they heard a rumour that it was deferred till the 14 day, yet, according to the first summons, thought it their duty to offer themselves to the King’s presence, which they did: at which time it pleased his Highness to signify unto the Bishops, that the day having prevented, or deceived him, he would have them return on Saturday next following.

Here the King seems to be quite unready for a meeting that had been scheduled several weeks before. As will be seen, the explanation that the day was “mistaken” was a polite cover for other confusions at court. Another significant point is that only the bishops and deans have come: other ministers were invited to represent those who had grievances and desired further reform, but they seem not to have arrived on the day appointed. The other two accounts agree on this point.
Both Patrick Galloway and the Harleian Account report that the meeting had been set for 12 January, on which day the king called on the bishops “to advise upon all the corruptions of this church, in doctrine, ceremonies, and discipline; and as they will answer to God in conscience, and to his Majesty upon their obedience, that they should return the third day after, which was Saturday.” There is no mention that the day was mistaken, or any hint that this was not a planned preliminary session.
The differences between these two groups of accounts are also found in their reports of the meeting on Saturday and constitute a fundamental problem in the historiography of the conference at Hampton Court. Barlow’s Summe and Substance and the anonymous Harleian account are the most detailed reports of the meetings, and the others can for the most part be distinguished by which of the two they agree with. It is only for 12 January that there is any no external evidence that can be brought to bear on the question of which accounts are more reliable.
There is in fact good reason to think that the plans to open the conference on Thursday were abandoned in some haste, and to put the king into the embarrassing position of postponing the ecclesiastical conference once again. The Journal of Levinus Munck records that on 12 January King James gave a banquet in the Privy Chamber for the Duke of Savoy’s Ambassador, who was taking his leave the next day. It seems odd that this banquet was arranged for the same day as an ecclesiastical conference that had been already long been scheduled.
The explanation appears lies in the scramble for precedence among diplomats. The envoys of several states had come to England that Christmas, mostly to congratulate James on his accession. According to Nicolo Molin, the Venetian Ambassador, the King had planned to give banquets at Christmas for the envoys he had not already feasted, and in order to avoid questions of precedence he invited the Spanish envoy de Taxis and the Marquis of Solin from Savoy on 26 December, and Montecuccoli of Tuscany and Voislanice the Ambassador of Poland the next day. Montecuccoli, who already seems to have been offended twice by de Taxis, took it as an insult to the Grand Duke of Tuscany that Savoy should be asked ahead of him, and refused to come. Although Lewis Lewkenor, the King's Master of Ceremonies, tried in vain to smooth ruffled feathers, in the end James had to withdraw the invitations. De Taxis was feasted alone on Boxing Day and Voislanice on the 27th: the others were to be invited "a day or two before they leave". The dinner for Solin in the privy chamber came on 12 January; that for Montecuccoli was on 2 February.[7] All this, along with the rather vague explanation of the postponement the King gave to the bishops, and Barlow's notice that the first the bishops had heard of the deferral was a rumour the night before, suggests that until very late, certainly by the night of Wednesday January 11, the conference had not officially been postponed.
This is the only point where records of other events at court can be brought to bear on the accounts of the Hampton Court Conference, and these records seem to support the version of events reported by Tobie Matthew and William Barlow. In the following section the appearance of the four puritan ministers will be discussed.

NOTES

This posting has been condensed from the original extract from The King's Own Conference.
[1] SPD James I, 14.4.28; printed in Strype, Whitgift, 568-9; Cardwell, History of Conferences.
[2] Howard Valence Jones, "The Journal of Levinus Munck", English Historical Review 68 no 267 (April 1953), 234-258, p. 249
[3] UK Public Records Office, Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, edited by J. H. Burton and David Masson, 14 vols (Edinburgh, 1877-1898), 6:63
[4] This impression is strongest in many accounts that can be found on the internet; just Google “Hampton Court Conference”.
[5] Four accounts, those of William Barlow, Tobie Matthew, and Patrick Galloway and the Harleian Account, report the meeting on Thursday.
[6] Cardwell, History of Conferences, p. 162.
[7] On the dinner for the envoy from Tuscany, see Nichols i. 317