The Calling of the Hampton Court Conference: Other Petitions, Documents, and Influences

Even if the Millenary Petition had been presented to the King and read by him on his way to London in the spring of 1603,[1] there is good reason to think that its influence has been exaggerated if it is held, as is often stated, that the Hampton Court Conference was called “in response to the Millenary Petition so that the issues raised by it could be discussed in a formal setting”[2] or that the Millenary Petition as “the original blueprint for discussion” at the conference. It is clear from the various accounts of the conference that neither John Rainolds, the puritan spokesman, nor King James followed it in presenting their agendas.[3] Other influences were clearly at work. Before setting out the evidence for this, it would be helpful to review the information that was circulating in England as James began his reign..

No one in England seems to have been shy about offering information or advice to their new king. As he wrote later to write he had “daily” received "informations” of scandals in the church.[4] The accounts of his progress from Edinburgh mention five petitions of various kinds and on various matters, although none of them can be identified with the Millenary Petition.[5] The State Papers preserve two petitions that are not mentioned in these narratives and are in part concerned with ecclesiastical affairs. One, "The poor man’s petition to the King", is preserved in the State papers and elsewhere. Only two of its fourteen clauses on the Church. One is that the King will "let there be an uniformity in true religion without any disturbance of papist and puritan," and the other that he will "let good preachers be well provided for, and without any bribery come to their livings."[6] The other is a memorandum headed "Things grievous and offensive to the Commonwealth, which may be reformed by the King or by a Parliament".[7] This document is in two parts, one listing abuses in the commonwealth, the other "things grievous and offensive in the Church of England". It not only lists abuses but also suggests appropriate remedies, and includes many points that were to be discussed at the conference, such as impropriated tithes.

Not all the petitions were spontaneous popular demands. A number of documents represent an organized movement to produce petitions from all over the country.[8] The most important of these is the Advices tending to Reformation, which called on noblemen, gentlemen and ministers "to complain of corruption and desire reformation in several petitions". It was printed by Roland Usher in The Reconstruction of the English Church. One copy has been annotated, apparently by Robert Cecil, showing that the government was aware of it.[9] Closely related to this is a letter from Henry Jacob, one of the radical ministers, to puritan preachers which contained a form for use in connection with the presentation of further petitions.[10] Another petition, from some ministers in Sussex, is found in the Cecil papers, where it is dated after October 18.[11] Other material is recorded in what is known as "Smart's Letter Book", a collection of letters and other documents made by a clergyman of Northamptonshire and preserved in BL MS Sloane 271.[12] It also contains the form of petition found in Henry Jacob's letter.[13] On September 24, 1603, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London wrote to Robert Cecil about the petitions of factious clergymen, presumably the ones in Sussex, which quotes the Advice tending to Reformation and refers to Henry Jacob.[14] It is interesting that in this group of petitions, which were produced through to the fall of 1603 there is no mention that a conference had been called to deal with church affairs.

Even without the petitions, James would have been aware of the dissensions in the Church. The matter came to him even before he left Scotland. As soon as it was announced that the old Queen was dead, Lewis Pickering, "a Northamptonshire gentleman, and zealous for the presbyterian party,” decided to appeal in person to the new King. At the same time, Archbishop Whitgift sent Thomas Neville, the Dean of Canterbury, to Edinburgh on behalf of the bishops and clergy. Pickering came swiftly, but it is not known "how far and with what answer he moved the king in that cause".[15] King James told Neville "that he would uphold the Government of the late Queen, as she left it," an answer which was welcome to Whitgift. He and some of the Bishops, particularly Bancroft of London, are said to have feared that the King would "favour the New Discipline", as Strype puts it, and make changes in church government and liturgy.[16] The reply to Neville is the first report that the King's conviction was to uphold the English Church as it had been left him, a conviction that was to be repeated several times over the next year. Perhaps the visits of Pickering and Neville had some influence on the king’s declaration in Edinburgh on 3 April, that “as God has promoved me to a greater power nor I had, so I must endeavour myself to flourish and establish religion, and take away the corruptions of both countries.” [17]

James received one document at about this that seems to have had more influence than any of the petitions, a treatise addressed to him by Francis Bacon called Certain Considerations touching the better pacification and edification of the Church of England. Bacon seems to have presented this to the king soon after his accession. A manuscript copy is in the State Papers;[18]. one MS copy adds to the title "at his first coming in." In this treatise Bacon makes no mention of the Millenary Petition or any other petition, or that a conference is being planned. He is aware of the need for reform, and discusses most of the plans for reform that were in the air, taking a moderate and independent line on them.[19] In this tract Bacon treated all but one of the points that the King was to raise at Hampton Court on the first day of the conference. Moreover, what James said at that meeting is often similar to Bacon’s tract. The section of this treatise on the liturgy and ceremonies is of particular interest because it includes the three points about the Prayer Book which James later raised with the bishops on the first day of the conference, and seems to have more in common with his presentation than any of the petitions.

There remains a document that probably never came to the king’s notice, but clearly iunfuenced the four ministers in presenting their case. In the Historic Manuscripts Commission report on the Manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu is a document which concerns an assembly of puritan ministers which seems to have met at the same time as the king’s conference. This document opens with nine points for which the "brethren chosen to deal for the cause in the conference" should solicit the King “on behalf of the Church in therse points.”. .This is followed by a list of participants in the conference, divided into “Bishops of the Conference,” “Deans,” “Ministers of the Conference,” and two “At their conference and in Place” after which are listed twenty-six ministers “at but not in Place.” Patrick Collinson wrote that the "meeting implies the assumption on the puritan side that they were to be represented at the conference by delegates, and the thirty ministers who attended represented their own 'countries'".[20] He also suggested that this delegation "was reminiscent of the parliamentary lobbies of the 1580s, with the delegates mostly survivors of the earlier campaigns".[21]

It now remains to examine what signs there are in the course of the Hampton Court Conference of whether it was meant to be a discussion of the Millenary Petition or not.

NOTES

[1] Anglican and Episcopal History 77:1 (March 2008), 46-70
[2] See http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Hampton_Court_Conference.htm.

[3] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 22-3
[4] Proclamation of 24 October, 1603.
[5]An English Garland: Stuart Tracts 1603-1693, with an Introduction by C. H. Firth. (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1964), pp. 30, 32, 38, 40, 58.
[6] SPD James I 14/1/A, B. A copy dated 1603 is found in the papers of F. H. T. Jervois, in HMC, Various Manuscripts, volume IV, p. 166. A MS at Exeter Cathedral included by John Nichols in his Progresses ... of James I, claims that it was presented at Robert Cecil's house, Theobalds (pronounced "Tibbalds"), where the King arrived on 3 May. However, since this petition is filed with a letter of the Privy Council to Robert Cecil dated 17 April it may be supposed that it was presented before the King came to Theobalds. It also shows that it was known to the government, and might have been seen by the King.
[7] SPD James I, 14/1/68 dated May, 1603.
[8] See Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp 452-4.
[9] Usher, Reconstruction ii. 358-9, printed from BL Additional MSS. 28471, f. 199, a Secretarial Copy, underlined by another hand. Usher says that internal evidence fixes the date as between May 12 and June 1.
[10] This letter is printed in part in the Oxford University Answere to the Millenary Petition and C. Burrage, Early English Dissenters,vol ii, p. 146f.
[11] HMC Salisbury xv. 262
[12] Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 453.
[13] This form is printed in W. J. Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough 1558-1610, p. 73, from BL Sloane MS 271, f. 20; it is also found in C. Burrage, Early English Dissenters, vol ii, p. 147, printed from MS Harl 6849, fol 254, with another version from Lambeth Palace Library MS 113fol 242f; and in the Oxford Answere. It is strange that this manuscript, fragments of which are quoted in almost every work on the early Jacobean church, has never been published in full.
[14] SPD James I, 14/3/83.
[15] Fuller, Church History of Britain, iii. 189.
[16] Strype, Whitgift, p. 559-60.
[17] David Calderwood. The History of the Kirk of Scotland, edited by Thomas Thomson. vol. 6. (Edinburgh, Wodrow Society, 1845), pp. 215-16.
[18] Francis Bacon, Certaine Considerations touching the better pacification and Edification of the Church of England: Dedicated to his most Excellent Majestie (London: for Henry Tomes, 1604). The MS in the State Papers, 14/5/51, is dated 1603. The treatise was published at first only in incomplete editions: see Bacon's Works, ed. J. Spedding (London: Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1868), vol. x., p. 102. See also Francis Bacon, edited by Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 501
[19] Vickers, op. cit., p. 501.
[20] HMC, MS of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, pp 32f.; Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 456 (the emphasis is mine).
[21] Collinson, "The Jacobean Religious Settlement", p. 37.