An Introduction to William Barlow's The Summe and Substance of the Conference

4. The Reaction to Barlow’s The Summe and Substance of the Conference (II)

Not much attention seems to have been paid to Jacob’s complaints about The Summe and substance of the conference at the time, but his objections were not forgotten. They reappear throughout the seventeenth century and after, and when they appeared they were answered. The controversies were long-winded and perhaps do not need to be repeated in much detail to show the one thing that is important: that there was and could not be a satisfactory conclusion.
In the 1650s Thomas Fuller and Peter Heylyn fought over Fuller's report that some writers had complained that Barlow, the "professed adversary" of the puritans, had set forth the conference "partially" and to their disadvantage. , even though Fuller had only said that others complained, but not that they complained justly; rather he thought they had no case.[1] Despite this, Fuller's remark has been interpreted just as Heylyn took it: the original DNB entry on Barlow remarks that Fuller 'to some extent' endorses the complaint against him. In this exchange, Peter Heylyn also asked how it was, if Barlow had set out the conference partially, that none of the ministers at the conference, or anyone speaking for them, ever demonstrated its "partiality and falsehoods", and that Barlow's book had never been “convicted of any such crime as it stands charged with, in any one particular passage to this very day".[2]
Henry Hickman, a controversialist who wrote much in defence of non-conformity soon found an answer: the puritan ministers never put out an account of the conference in opposition to Barlow's because "it was an evil time, and the prudent might think themselves obliged to be silent". While this is a trivial point, other accounts were known, and it may be asked why these were not put forward in opposition. Hickman also related that Barlow on his deathbed did "with grief complain of the wrong he had done" to Rainolds and his colleagues, by "misreporting some of their answers, and certain passages therein contained". Rather than explain then where he had this story, Hickman promised "to give a satisfactory account to any person of ingenuity that shall desire it".[3]
As might be expected, Heylyn demanded this 'satisfactory account'.[4] Hickman’s account is convoluted, to say the least. He wrote that for the truth of the story, "M. H. did consult Mr. Sparks now with the Lord." Mr Sparks had answered through "his friend Mr. J. M.," that he remembered correctly he had heard it from "Mr H. J., a very aged Minister". Hickman also claimed that Mr Sparks, son of Dr. Sparks, had spoken "with great indignation of the abuse put upon either his Father or Dr. Reynolds" when Barlow was mentioned. He further claimed that a Mr Pierce and his friends and a Mr Wilkinson of Waddesdon could support the story.[5] The Mr Sparks "now with the Lord" is neither Thomas Sparke nor his son but another, a Noel Sparkes. This whole account is like Sir Philip Sidney's Mother Miso, who said of a story, "I will tell you now, what a good old woman told me, what an old wise man told her, what a great learned clerk told him, and gave it him in writing; and here I have it in my prayer book".[6]
Heylyn retorted that "the man himself is dead, from whom we are to take our greatest light in so dark a business", and that the whole story "may be one of those pious frauds devised by the Pamphleter ... for imposing as well upon the dead as upon the living". After the dead man, the story rests on two men known only by their initials, and "as easy to be found, and as honest folk as Nicholas Nemo, in Utopia, or Madam Charity of the Oudemnon street in Mantines, or Doctor H. H. in the Margin of the Libel which is now before us'". Further, he asked why this story "should lie concealed (like a spark raked up in ashes) five and fifty years, and then blaze out on a sudden, when it was not thought of". Finally, he said that he himself had known Thomas Sparke's sons, and "never heard the least word from either of them of any wrong done, or supposed to be done by Doctor Barlow, in drawing up the substance and abridgment of (the conference)".[7]
In 1679 William Barrett, in The Nonconformists Vindicated, repeated the story with full names for the initials.[8] It was repeated again by James Peirce in 1710,[9] answered by John Strype, in his Life of Whitgift in 1718, and again in 1720 in an anonymous answer to James Peirce.[10] The argument ended in a draw. No new arguments or information arose until the twentieth century. The objections to Barlow survived, and one might speak of a puritan, or at least non-conformist historical tradition coming from such works as Neale’s History of the Puritans.[11] The doubts survived in the main-stream received opinion as well; for Barlow has been given a luke-warm acquittal of wilful misrepresentation, at least in the absence of a more correct narrative on the other side, and his work judged to be as fair an account as could be expected from a partisan who had no sympathy for the arguments he was reporting. Even this faint praise was abandoned from 1961, when Mark Curtis championed the Harleian Account as the authentic voice of the conference. The reasons Curtis gave to substantiate his claim that The Summe and Substance is unreliable and "a skilful piece of party propaganda" almost all come from points where it differs from this Harleian Account. He claims, but does not demonstrate that "at all important points" this account is "consistent with the rest of the evidence". The obvious question is why this account should be believed.

NOTES

[1] T. Fuller, Church History of Great Britain, with notes by J. Nichols, iii vols (London: William Tegg, 1868) iii.193. P. Heylyn, Examen Historicum: Or A Discovery and Examination of the Mistakes, Falsities and Defects in Some Modern Histories. (London: for Henry Seile and Richard Royston, 1659), p. 172. Fuller, The Appeal of Injured Innocence, unto the religious learned and ingenuous reader in a controversie betwist the animadvertor, Dr. Peter Heylyn, and the author, Thomas Fuller ... (London: William Godbid, 1659), p. 97.
[2] Peter Heylyn, Examen Historicum, p. 172.
[3] H. Hickman, Patro-scholastiko-dikaiosis, or, A Justification of the Fathers and the Schoolmen Shewing that there are not Selfe-Condemned for denying the Pesivity of Sin (Oxford: Henry Hall for John Adams and Edward Forrest, 1659), p. 38, margin.
[4] Heylyn, Certamen Epistolare, Or The Letter Combate. Managed by Peter Heylyn, D.D. with 1. Mr Baxter of Kederminsiter. 2. Dr. Barnard of Grays-Inne. 3. Mr. Hickman of Mag. C. Oxon, and 4. J. H. of the City of Westminster Esq; With 5. An appendix to the same, in answer to some passages in Mr Fuller's late appeal. (London, J. M. for H. Twyford et al, 1659), p. 122.
[5] H. Hickman, A Review of the Certamen Epistolare betwixt Peter Heylyn D.D. and Hen. Hickman B.D. (London: for John Adams 1659) [August 31], p. 28.
[6] Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, Written by Sir Philip Sidney Knight. Now since the first edition augmented and ended (London : Printed [by John Windet] for William Ponsonbie,1593). pp 80, 81.
[7] Peter Heylyn, Historia Quinqu-articularis (By E.C. for Thomas Johnson, 1660) Qqq2. Heylyn made a more general defence of Barlow in Aerius Redivivvs, or The History of the Puritans ... from the Year 1536 to the Year 1647 (London: Robert Battersby for Christopher Wilkinson and Thomas Archer), 2nd edition, 1672), p. 369.
[8] William Barrett, The Nonconformists Vindicated From the Abuses Put upon them by Mr. Durel and Mr. Scrivener ... (London: for Thomas Parkhurst, 1679) p. 180.
[9] J. Pierce, Vindiciae fratrum dissentientium in Anglia adversus V.C. Gulielimi Nicholsii STP Defensionem Ecclesiae Anglicanae. (London: T. Ilive, 1710), p. 58.
[10] [Grey, Zachary,] Vindication of the Church of England, In Answer to Mr. Peirce's Vindication of the Dissenters ... By A Presbyter of the Church of England (London, to be sold by John Wyat, 1720), p. 111.
[11] Neal, Daniel. History of the Puritans, or Protestant Nonconformists, from the Reformation in 1517 to the Revolution in 1688 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855)

An Introduction to William Barlow's The Summe and Substance of the Conference

3. The Reaction to Barlow’s Summe and Substance of the Conference [I]

C. S. Knighton writes that when Barlow’s Summe and Substance of the Conference appeared, it “was immediately criticized for misrepresentation”. This statement provokes one to ask by whom the account was criticized, and what weight the criticism should be given? It is understandable why a reference work such as the ODNB has few specific references are provided; but here one would dearly love a footnote! The complaint that Barlow had misrepresented the king was made by Henry Jacob in his A Christian and Modest Offer of a most indifferent Conference in 1606, which seems to be the earliest published criticism of Barlow; but Jacob had not taken part in the conference.
According to Barlow himself, King James and the Bishop of London approved his text, as did the King’s Latin secretary, Sir Thomas Lake.[1] Without this approval it would likely never have been published. Bancroft's approval of The Summe and Substance is itself worth noting. Barlow portrays Bancroft as bad-tempered and rather rude, and says that he was rebuked by the King on more than once occasion. In all, he is not that much kinder to the bishop than are the anonymous puritan accounts. Bancroft would hardly have approved the account if he thought this was untrue. We do not know what opinions of the other bishops and deans who participated in the conference may have had. What of the four ministers who represented the case for further reform?
In 1607 Thomas Sparks published A Brotherly Perswasion to Vnitie, which he says he had written two years before, that is, in 1605. After the conference, he writes, he himself conformed, and "privately by word and writing laboured to persuade all whom I met with, to do likewise". In "The Preamble" he quotes from and refers to The Summe and Substance at considerable length, never once dropping a hint that he was not satisfied with the account.
Although Laurence Chaderton did not publish his opinions about The Summe and Substance he made many annotations in his copies of that work and others which have recently been described in detail by Arnold Hunt.[2] It is clear that Chaderton had issues with Barlow, as they say nowadays. He objected to Barlow's calling the ministers "agents for the millenary plaintiffs". Hunt describes several other annotations which are important for understanding Chaderton's position during and after the Conference. Some of these do complain of inaccuracy. At Barlow's report that the King excused Bancroft's indignation at the ministers on the second day because "they did thus traduce the present well settled Church government and also, did proceed in so indirect a course contrary to their own pretence, and the intent of that meeting also", Chaderton notes, "nihil istiusmodi memini, I remember nothing of the sort."[3] Although there is no reason to doubt a private note like this one, to say “I don’t remember” is not the same as saying "the King did not say this." Since both Barlow and Chaderton were present it is difficult to decide between them. No other accounts reports anything to the point:, nor does Sparke mention this passage. However, Barlow was writing soon after the event with the help of other participants' memoirs, while Chaderton was making a private annotation, possibly in the following autumn, as he read the account.
Chaderton similarly noted “not to memory” at Barlow's report that the King "very well approved" Bancroft’s explanation of reading of the Church of England's doctrine on Predestination in the last paragraph of Article 17. Where James is reported to have "left it to be considered" whether Rainolds' doubt might be cleared by adding such words as, "we may often depart from Grace," Chaderton interpreted this as "a departure from the measure, not from the gift". This may put "an orthodox Reformed" gloss on the King's words, but it does not question Barlow's accuracy.[4]
Hunt cites notes by Chaderton on Bancroft's argument for lay baptism and Bilson's point that ministers are not of the essence of the sacrament.[5] In both cases, Chaderton's annotations agree with the opinions that Barlow attributed to the King. Hunt cites no further annotations that have to do with the question of Barlow's reliability, but points out that Chaderton's comments at these points are:

arguably less significant than what he fails to say elsewhere. The crucial events of the second day's Conference--the King's brisk dismissal of the puritan objections to the Prayer Book, his famous remark 'no bishop, no king' and his parting threat that if the puritans did not conform "I will harrie them out of the land or else do worse"--attracted no marginal comment from Chaderton, implying that on these points Barlow's account is a tolerably accurate record of what actually took place.[6]

Before turning to John Rainolds we may note that Chaderton’s comments were private annotations, and never published.
There is no evidence of what John Rainolds thought of The Summe and Substance except onw anecdote which first appeared seventy-five years after that book was published. In 1679 one William Barrett wrote that he was "pretty well assured" that when Barlow's account appeared, Rainolds was seen reading a copy at a stationer's shop in Oxford. When asked what book he was reading, he answered, "It was a book in which he was concerned and wronged". Barrett says further, "If any doubt of this, he may (I suppose) receive satisfaction about it from Dr. Henry Wilkinson, resident at or about Clapham, near London". There is no record at all of what John Knewstub thought of The Summe and Substance.
There is little evidence, then, that the ministers at the conference thought that Barlow had misrepresented it or them, and what evidence there is does not seem to have been widely known. So where did Barlow’s reputation for falsifying come from? The earliest published objection to Barlow's account was made by Henry Jacob, who had been one of the ministers at the meeting "at but not in place",[7] and was so dissatisfied by the conference that he declared it had not met the Puritan demands and called for another conference. He found fault with the whole process of the conference, but first with the published account.[8] He said that to the ministers the conference was "that which is Non Ens", except for the "few that were present". The others knew nothing of the conference, and could put no confidence in the contradictory reports that were circulating. Although Barlow's version was "set forth as the true report", since it was "published only by the Prelates (who are partial) without the knowledge of the other side, [it] deserves no credit". Jacob gave two reasons for this assertion.
The first was that "Doctor Morton" was "allowed to call some part of it into question, even some speeches fathered upon his Majesty, which he was fain to confute as unsound and contrary to divinity", and if Barlow could so abuse the King's speeches, "it is much more likely that speeches of other men are abused". By "Doctor Morton" Jacob seems to mean Thomas Morton (1564-1659). At the time of the conference Morton was the Earl of Rutland's chaplain and lived at Belvoir[9] Castle in Leicestershire. Morton was not present at the conference and could hardly have called Barlow's accuracy into question from his own knowledge. The value of Morton’s comment can only now be judged from its context, but Jacobs did not state where he heard or read what Doctor Morton said. The statement was hard to trace.
The Jesuit Robert Parsons published a tract against Morton in 1607 which may suggest an answer. Parsons says that when Morton wrote of comments which the Summe and Substance attributed to the King about the notes to the Geneva Bible which appear to justify the deposition and killing of princes, "he taketh licence to dissent from his Majesty, signifying in effect that either the conference was not well related, or his Majesty mistook their meaning in those notes".[10] Morton’s original remark seems to be "Wherefore supposing that the Relation of the Conference be direct, yet may you not think his Majesty ... could take exception to the note."[11] That seems to be rather a weak grounding for Jacob's point. After all, the King's comment on the Geneva notes can hardly be described as "some speeches", or Morton's remark as confuting it as unsound.
The second reason Jacob gives is that the prelates, by which he means Barlow, "fraudulently cut off" the King's speeches against the corruptions of the church, "As appeareth by that testimony of the Dean of the Chapel ... That his Majesty did that day wonderfully play the Puritan." This seems to be echoed in Curtis' remark that "Barlow's account fails to mention the king's inquiry about what reform was needed in the Church and the bishop's response thereto".[12] We have already looked at the remark about “playing the puritan” as it had been mistakenly attributed to Lancelot Andrewes. As we saw then, the remark need not refer to anything more than the King's stand against baptism by lay persons, something on which all accounts agree.
The contemporary criticisms of Barlow’s account for misrepresentation, then, seem to depend primarily on Henry Jacob’s complaints. But he was not at the conference. He may have based his opinion on one source we have not yet seriously discussed, that is, the anonymous accounts. These differ so far from the known accounts by eye-witnesses that they must be treated with great caution. It is enough for now to say that Jacob’s statements appear to be based on rumour. It is hard to know how to take the opinion of a person who says in one place that he does not know what happened at the conference and at another accuses an eye witness of getting it wrong.
It is also difficult in reading the modern literature on the conference to avoid sensing a bias in favour of the puritan side, as if we could take anything written against the bishops as being open and transparent, with no agenda beyond the truth, while anything for them is partisan and deeply suspicious.
In the next installment we will look at later reactions to Barlow’s work, and a literary debate over it that lasted into the Eighteenth century.

Notes

[1] HMC Salisbury, xvi, p. 95
[2] Hunt, "Laurence Chaderton and the Hampton Court Conference", pp. 207-228.
[3] Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference (1604), 27-28: Hunt "Laurence Chaderton and the Hampton Court Conference", p. 223.
[4] Barlow, 30; Hunt, "Laurence Chaderton and the Hampton Court Conference", p. 224.
[5] Barlow, 18.
[6] Hunt, "Laurence Chaderton and the Hampton Court Conference", p. 223.
[7] Jacob, A Christian and Modest Offer; HMC Montagu of Beaulieu (1900), p. 34.
[8] Jacob, A Christian and Modest Offer, p. 28ff.
[9] Belvoir is pronounced “Beaver”.
[10] [Robert Parsons] A Treatise tending to Mitigation towardes Catholike-Subiectes in England ... Against the seditious writings and Thomas Morton, Minister, & some others to the contrary (Saint-Omer: Printed by F. Bellet, 1607), pp. 119f. Parsons's note refers to page 103 of the Reply, which in turn refers to "the book of Conference, pag. 47".
[11] [Thomas Morton], A Full Satisfaction concerning a Double Romish Iniquitie; hainous Rebellion, and more then heathenish Aequivocation (London: for Edmund Weaver, 1606), pp. 103, 105.
[12] Curtis, "The Hampton Court Conference and Its Aftermath", p. 8, n.25.

Dramatis Personae of the Conference

Part III. Clergy

i. The Bishops

The Archbishop of Canterbury and eight other bishops took part in the conference at Hamptobn Court. With two exceptions, the lists of participants in the various accounts of the conference agree on which bishops took part. The order of bishops in the following list is that in Barlow's Summe and Substance; the numbers follow on from the “extras” and roughly count how many people might have been present at the conference. The doubtful bishops are placed at the end and are not assigned numbers
42. The Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift (c1530?-1604) was about seventy-three years old. Early in his career at Cambridge he showed sympathy for the radical protestants and objected to the requirement that the surplice be worn in the college chapel: later he became convinced of the rightness of the Queen's policy, and increasingly severe towards nonconformity.[1] He was made Bishop of Worcester in 1577 and Primate in 1583. It has been reported that he expected the worst from a king who had been raised by Presbyterians, and at James's accession Whitgift sent the Dean of Canterbury with expressions of loyalty from the bishops and to ascertain his attitude to the English Church. He was pleased with the king’s response. Whitgift met King James for the first time at Theobalds in April 1603.
One can get the impression that Whitgift was already at his end when the conference met and left all the planning to Bancroft. This is hardly the impression one gets from the only account that gives enough detail of the meetings, which is Barlow's. Furthermore, it was not for a fortnight after the conference that the archbishop caught the chill that ended him.[2] He died at Lambeth on 29 February 1604 after a stroke. Whitgift was not present for the discussions on the second day at Hampton Court: he and most of the other bishops were writing up the decisions that had been reached at the first day's meeting. The absence of most of the bishops from the second session should be kept in mind when reading the discussions by Tyacke and Collinson of four bishops whom they count as sympathetic to the puritans.
43. Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London (1544-1619), was fifty-nine years old. He had been a chaplain and protégé of Whitgift, and he had been bishop of London since 1597. After Whitgift's death he was to succeed him at Canterbury. Thomas Bilson and he were the two bishops chosen to take part in the meeting with the ministers on the second day of the Conference, while the rest of the bishops were with Whitgift writing up the conclusions from Saturday. According to Tobie Matthew Bancroft and Bilson had been chosen by Archbishop Whitgift. Why did he make this choice? Is this evidence that Bancroft was the organizing genius behind the bishops' party at the conference?[3] Here we must remember not only Bancroft's earlier activities in opposition to the Puritan movement, and in particular in the hunt for Martin Marprelate, but also the sermon he preached at Paul's Cross in February 1588, which Collinson has called a landmark in English church history. In it, he defended episcopacy "as being of apostolical, not of dominical provenance".[4] Bancroft was also concerned with the apprehension of Roman Catholic priests and conspirators, as letters in the State Papers show.[5]
It is difficult to describe Bancroft's relationship to King James briefly, but some facts should be noted. His sermon in 1588 had caused an outcry in Scotland because of comments he made about the Scottish Church, and the King's protest to the English government resulted in a letter of submission from Bancroft.[6] Bancroft and James probably met for the first time on Sunday, 1 May 1603, when the bishop preached before the King at Standon. On 22 July the King and Queen spent the day with Bancroft at Fulham Palace on their way to Whitehall before the coronation. There is evidence, from all accounts, that there was friction between the two at the conference. After the conference and after Whitgift's death, the King had the confidence to entrust to Bancroft the presidency of the Convocation and the succession to Canterbury. That last appointment was not made automatically: Sir John Harington has left observations that suggest that the appointment to Canterbury in 1604 was no foregone conclusion: "divers worthy men were named in the vacancy," and popular rumour named Tobie Matthew of Durham. Harington says that Bancroft was chosen as a man more exercised in affairs of the state, and from conjectures from speeches of the King that since Bancroft was unmarried, "he supposed him the fitter, according to Queen Elizabeth's principles of state".[7]
What of Bancroft's churchmanship? Nicholas Tyacke notes the hostility to the puritan requests which he showed at the conference and mentions Bancroft's "direct criticism of predestinarian views", but acknowledges that Bancroft cannot simply be called an "Arminian", since he objected to a false as opposed to a true doctrine of predestination and notes that in 1598 Bancroft had "personally licensed" for publication a translation of a Calvinist treatise which "denied that Christ had died for all mankind and asserted the doctrine of unconditional predestination".[8] We may also note that Bancroft and Laurence Chaderton had been friends since their student days. Kenneth Fincham is not able to fit Bancroft easily into the three categories which organize his study of the Jacobean episcopate, but calls him "an Elizabethan conformist protestant", and noted that Bancroft's friends included both "proto-Arminians such as Barlow, Harsnett and Neile", and "important Calvinists including King, Morton and the Abbot brothers". Samuel Harsnett and George Abbot, who were later to be theological adversaries, were the executors of his will in 1610.
44. Tobie or Tobias Matthew, Bishop of Durham (1546-1628), was aged about fifty-seven. He had become Bishop of Durham in 1595, and in 1606 was named Archbishop of York. In May 1604, as noted just above, it was rumoured that Matthew had been chosen to succeed Whitgift at Canterbury. Kenneth Fincham says that Matthew was "the most celebrated of all the preaching prelates of King James I"; according to his diary, "Matthew gave 721 sermons as Dean, and 550 as Bishop of Durham, and another 721 in his first fifteen years as Archbishop of York".[9] He was both a diligent pastor and a trustworthy statesman, whom the government could trust "to watch and guard the northern shires".[10] He was the first English bishop that James met, and seems to have impressed him with his cheerful humour and wit.
Nicholas Tyacke reports Stephen Egerton's statement of 30 November 1603 that, of Bishops Babington of Worcester, Robinson of Carlisle, Rudd of St David's and Matthew of Durham, "the first three 'are turned Puritans, to whom I doubt not but Durham will join'". It is not clear what Egerton meant by the word "puritan". Tyacke also reports that Matthew wrote to Robert Cecil regarding "the scandalous circumstances of the execution of the now Church's discipline", and that when he was Archbishop of York he protected individual Puritan ministers. Tyacke admits, however, that "to dub such bishops Puritans was to confuse tolerance with agreement, although in light of later usage it is interesting that they also tended to be strong Calvinists". Tyacke uses a sermon of 1592 to show that Matthew's doctrine of election was Calvinist. Kenneth Fincham gives evidence of Matthew's tolerance of slight nonconformity.[11] Matthew was not present when the four ministers appeared before the King on the second day of the conference, since he was with Whitgift writing up the decisions of the first. So the kindness or sympathy he might have had towards the nonconformists did not come into play. After the conference Matthew remained at Durham until the death of Matthew Hutton, when he succeeded as Archbishop of York.
The day after the conference ended Matthew sent an account of the meetings to Archbishop Hutton. It is one of only three surviving accounts of the conference known to be by a participant.
45. Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester (1546/7-1616), was about fifty-seven. He was a native of Winchester and was educated there and at New College, Oxford. Upon ordination he became a noted preacher. William Lamont described him as "a shadowy figure", principally famous for two works whose reputation was at his height after his death.[12] He was made Bishop of Worcester in 1596 and translated to Winchester in 1597.[13] In 1593 Bilson published The Perpetual Government of Christ's Church, in which "the coping-stone was set upon the Elizabethan apologetic for episcopacy", in which he argued that the episcopal office had been "observed from the apostles' time" and was by divine appointment.[14]
Bilson preached at the coronation of King James and Queen Anne, and the royal couple stayed at Bilson's residence at Farnham Castle from 13 to 17 August during their summer progress in 1603.[15] Tyacke notes that "the organizers of Puritan agitation" considered Bilson to be one of their most dangerous foes before the conference: "they wrote, for example of his attempts to discredit Galloway with the King". He also stresses Bilson's affirmation that lay baptism was in accord with antiquity.[16] Bilson's position was, however, not unbending: Kenneth Fincham notes that he "was reported to have said that he himself would not subscribe to everything in the Prayer Book".[17] He and Bancroft represented the bishops' part in the second day of the conference. He remained Bishop of Winchester until his death on 18 June 1616. Anthony à Wood called him, "as reverend and learned a prelate as England ever afforded", and, along with Richard Field (below, number 60), "a principal maintainer of the church of England". Adam Nicolson's statement that he was a member of the Privy Council is an error.[18]
46. Gervase Babington, bishop of Worcester (1550-1610), was about fifty-three years old. He owed his original preferment to the second Earl of Pembroke, who had employed him as tutor to his sons. In 1591 he was elected to the see of Llandaff and translated to Exeter in 1595 and Worcester in 1597. He was said to have supported Essex' rising in 1600.[19] He is one of the three bishops said by Egerton to have "turned Puritan". Kenneth Fincham suggests that Babington, who "began his ministry as a city lecturer and always remained an active preacher", may have been one of the bishops he calls "evangelical", but admits that "his role as visitor and pastor remains obscure".[20] He also suggests that Babington appears to have endorsed the primacy of preaching in the minister's vocation, as against the "Arminian" emphasis on prayer and sacraments.[21] Nicholas Tyacke says that "information about Gervase Babington's disposition towards Puritanism is lacking", but notes that his position on predestination was "more unyielding" than that of the Lambeth Articles, stressing his opposition to Bancroft and Bilson on the question of baptism by lay persons.[22] The Summe and Substance presents him as differing from Bancroft over the meaning of the rubric of private baptism.[23] After the conference Babington remained as Bishop of Worcester.
47. Anthony Rudd, Bishop of St David's, (1549?-1615) was about fifty-four. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1584 he was appointed Dean of Gloucester and was elected to St David's early in 1594. Queen Elizabeth admired his preaching. He preached before James at Greenwich on 14 June 1603.[24] There is no record of his taking an active part at the conference. He is one of the bishops said by Stephen Egerton to have "turned Puritan". Nicholas Tyacke notes that Rudd spoke in the convocation of 1604 against the enforcement of ceremonies such as the cross in baptism, "since both the Puritans and their opponents agreed 'in substance of religion".[25] Fincham would add him to the eighteen prelates who observed the model of the bishop as preaching pastor, with varying degrees of conviction and success, if there were enough information. He remained Bishop of St David's for his life.
48. Anthony Watson, Bishop of Chichester (d.1605) was probably about fifty years old. Tyacke notes that he had been a protégé of the Catholic sympathizer, Lord Lumley.[26] He was appointed Lord Almoner in 1595 and was continued in that office by James. In 1596 he made Bishop of Chichester in 1596 and licensed to retain his other preferments in commendam. He attended the deathbed of Elizabeth I. Fincham counts him as a court bishop who made little impact on his see: he "was appointed to Chichester in 1596, but as Almoner...resided outside the diocese for many months a year."[27] Tyacke notes that Watson and Thomas Dove "appeared actively hostile to the Puritans and their requests" and adds that "Watson had taken a prominent part in arresting some Puritan petitioners in late 1603".[28] It was Watson who brought the activities of Sussex petitioners to the attention of Whitgift and the Council in the fall of 1603. After the conference he remained at Chichester, and died the next year.
49. Henry Robinson, Bishop of Carlisle (1553?-1616), was about fifty. He had been Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, before his election to Carlisle in 1598, and had earlier been chaplain to Edmund Grindal. Nicholas Tyacke, following Collinson, suggests that he "had in the 1580s held religious views probably identical with those of the Puritan Reynolds", and quotes Stephen Egerton's opinion that Robinson, like Babington and Rudd, had "turned Puritan", as noted above.[29] Collinson notes that Robinson and Rainolds had long been in the same college at Oxford, "and were at least as closely allied in the Oxford of the 1590s as were the leading Calvinist divines of Cambridge, Whitaker and Chaderton”. He cites Richard Bancroft, who said that Robinson was Rainolds's "especial and most familiar friend". However, Bancroft's remark is intended to show that Rainolds would agree with Robinson's opinion that titles of honour given to bishops are not repugnant to scripture or antiquity, and that the title of bishop "was then by the usuall language of the Fathers appropriated to him who had the presidentship over the elders".[30] Kenneth Fincham considered Robinson to be an evangelical preaching pastors, and notes the memorial brass that celebrates his "strong leadership and effective government: "on Robinson's crosier were inscribed the words 'for correcting, feeding, watching and directing'".[31] However, Fincham also argues that
to label these evangelical preaching pastors as 'Puritans' would be to collapse sympathy with similarity and mask substantial differences in attitude to government, ceremony, and doctrine. The indulgence that these bishops offered to individual Puritans should not be confused with support for major changes in ceremony or discipline.[32]
50. Thomas Dove, Bishop of Peterborough (1555-1630) was about forty-eight years old. He had been a contemporary of Andrewes at Merchant Taylor's School and at Cambridge. He was made chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, who praised his preaching, saying "that this Dove was a dove with silver wings, who must have been inspired by the grace of Him Who once assumed the form of a dove." He became bishop of Peterborough in 1602. It is reported that at the conference Dove 'alleged out of the Ecclesiastical writers that an ancient father in case of necessity Baptised with sand instead of water'.[33] Tyacke notes that Richard Butler, Dove's commissary, "had earlier caused a furore by maintaining that infants dying unbaptized were damned".[34] It is worth noting that after the conference, in 1611 and 1614 Dove was charged with remissness in allowing silenced ministers to preach; Fuller, however, reports that even James I chided him for being overly strict. There are also letters in the Public Record Office [e.g., one of 4 August 1628] which show that he was somewhat remiss in complying with orders. He remained Bishop of Peterborough until his death.

Bristol and Oxford

Two other bishops are mentioned as having attended the conference, one in the Harleian Account, the other in the Beaulieu papers.
The Bishop of Bristol is listed as a participant in the conference as "B. of Bristowe" in the Harleian Account. Bristol had been vacant since 1593, and John Thornborough (1551-1641) was translated there from Limerick at the beginning of James's reign: he was enthroned on 23 August 1603. The DNB says that he had been translated because "in Ireland he showed himself zealous on behalf of the crown". Thornborough had also been Dean of York and Clerk of the Closet to Elizabeth I. "TM" in the True Narration of the King's journey to London in 1603, says that James "highly commended" Thornborough's "doctrine and method" in a sermon at York on Palm Sunday. The fact that the provision of preachers for Ireland was a topic dealt with at the conference would make him seem to be a useful participant, but there is no other evidence that he was present. Thornborough had been involved in a scandalous divorce and a second marriage.[35]
The Bishop of Oxford is mentioned only in the list of participants in the Beaulieu papers. Oxford had also been vacant for some years. In December 1603, King James nominated John Bridges (died 1618), then Dean of Salisbury, to Oxford. He was elected on 4 January 1604 and consecrated on 12 February. In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury dated 12 January 1604, James referred to Bridges as "Dean of Salisbury, elected Bishop of Oxford". Bridges had been educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge: he graduated BA in 1556, which suggests that at the time of the conference he was in his sixties. The question of his attendance at the conference is inextricable from that of the Dean of Salisbury, which is as yet undetermined. It is possible that Bridges was present, but not necessarily that he was present as Bishop of Oxford. It is understandable that there some confusion could arise when a man had just been named to a new office.
Finally, we must mention Richard Vaughan, Bishop of Chester 1597-1604, whose name appears on the first list in the State Papers of bishops to be invited to the conference but was then struck out. The reason for this was is not known. When Laurence Chaderton requested a respite for some ministers in Lancashire from wearing the surplice and using the cross in baptism, it was agreed that Whitgift should write to Bishop Vaughan on that matter. Vaughan became Bishop of London on Bancroft’s death in 1604 and died in 1607.

Why These Bishops?

Why were these particular bishops chosen for the conference? Precedence may explain the choice of some of the prelates: the sees of Canterbury, York, London, Durham, and Winchester have always had a special position among English bishops, and to this day are the only ones whose precedence does not depend on seniority of consecration. It is not surprising, therefore, that four of these five should have been chosen. The only question then is why Hutton of York did not attend. From the letter he sent to Whitgift in October 1603 concerning matters likely to be raised at the conference it is evident that he was interested and had influence.[36] Perhaps the combination of age and the difficulty of travel kept him away. The other four, along with Anthony Watson of Chichester, who was Lord Almoner, were all known personally to James by August 1603 when he called the conference. Although Barlow lists the remaining five bishops in order of seniority by consecration, they do not seem to have been chosen on that basis of seniority. Several of the fourteen English and Welsh bishops who had not been summoned to at the conference were senior to Thomas Dove, who had only been consecrated in 1602.
The geographic distribution of their sees does not seem to explain why these bishops were chosen. Canterbury, London, Winchester and Chichester are in the south and south-east, Worcester and Peterborough are somewhat but not much further north, St David's is in Wales, and Carlisle and Durham are on the border of Scotland. This does not seem to have been an attempt at a fair geographical distribution. At the conference, however, when the King's wish to have preachers planted in Ireland was discussed, it was decided to do the same in Wales and the Borders of Scotland.[37] Perhaps the presence of St David's, Carlisle, and Durham shows that this idea was already being considered, or that the decision itself is the result of their presence.
As Patrick Collinson has said, the bishops did not form "a monolithic group with but one voice and that the voice of Bancroft".[38] Collinson and Tyacke have noted from Stephen Egerton's comment that Babington, Rudd, Robinson, and Matthew were considered to have had puritan leanings, and been in "closer sympathy with Reynolds and Sparke than they were with their episcopal colleagues, Bancroft and Bilson, just as the two moderate puritan spokesmen held a position closer to the moderate bishops than to the radicals who regarded them as their delegates".[39] None of these four was present on the second day to meet with the four ministers: Bancroft and Bilson alone represented the bishops that day, as was noted above. All the bishops were present at the first session, and in Chapter IV we will see that very many important matters were discussed and decided then. James apparently wanted to hear a range of opinion from his bishops. He may indeed have had advice from Whitgift or his Privy Counsellors or both on the bishops it was best to invite. Only four of the bishops at the conference had preached before the King: the bishops of Lincoln and Ely had also preached before him in 1603, but were not asked to Hampton Court.[40] The main consideration seems to have been that the senior bishops of the Church be present and that there be a variety of opinion.

Notes

[1] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 19, citing P. Collinson, "The 'nott conformytye' of the young John Whitgift", JEH 15, (October 1964), 192-200. Whitgift's career is described well by Sheils in ODNB, vol 58, pp. 717-727.
[2] H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1958), p. 407.
[3] See, e.g., MacGrath, In the Beginning, pp. 153-154.
[4] Norman Sykes, Old Priest and New Presbyter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), pp. 25-6.
[5] SDP James I 14/2/43, 49, 67; 3/14,
[6] See Owen Chadwick, "Richard Bancroft's Submission", JEH 3 (1952), pp. 58-73, and W. Cargill Thompson, "A Reconsideration of Richard Bancroft's Pauls Cross Sermon", JEH 20 (1969), p. 253.
[7] Kenneth Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 27. Of the bishops at Hampton Court, five (Whitgift, Babbington, Bancroft, Robinson and Watson) were unmarried and four (Bilson, Dove, Matthew, and Rudd) were married. There is no obvious relation between marital status and churchmanship: the fellows of colleges at Oxford and Cambrudge had to be unmarried.
[8] Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 15-17. The work in question was Kimedoncius' Of the Redemption of Mankind. It is not entirely clear what weight one can give to such a "personal license" until one has examined every entry in the Stationers' Registers; a quick glance suggests that there is not much doctrinal difference between books entered under the hand of the bishop and books entered by his chaplains. During the conference, Bancroft referred to Kimedoncius and Chemnitius as authorities favouring the use of the Apocrypha.
[9] Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 89-90
[10] "Matthew, Tobie", DNB.
[11]Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp 17-18; Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 221-2, 258.
[12] W. M. Lamont "The Rise and Fall of Bishop Bilson", Journal of British Studies 5:2 (May 1966), pp 22-32, p. 22.
[13] "Bilson, Thomas", in DNB
[14] Sykes, Old Prebyter and New Priest, pp. 63-66.
[15] Thomas Bilson, A Sermon preached at Westminster before the King and Queenes Maiesties, at their Coronations on Saint Iames his day, being the 28. of Iuly. 1603. By the Reuerend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of Winchester (London, V.S. for Clement Knight, 1603); J. Nichols, Progresses of King James I, i.251.
[16] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 15; Barlow, Summe and Substance D1v; BL Sloane 271 fo 23.
[17] Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 65-6.
[18] Nicolson, God's Secretaries, p. 53.
[19] "Babington, Gervase", DNB.
[20] Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 270-1.
[21] Ibid., p. 236
[22] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 17f, citing a sermon at Paul's Cross of 1590.
[23] Barlow, Summe and Substance, C3v.
[24] Anthony Rudd, A Sermon preached at Greenwich before the Kings Maiestie vpon Tuesday in Whitsun Weeke being the 14. of Iune. 1603 (London: I Harrison for Thomas Man and Clement Knight, 1603).
[25] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 17, citing BL Harl 7049, fos 284-5. See also Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp. 65-6.
[26] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p.22.
[27] Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 292.
[28] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 16, citing HMC Salisbury, xv. 262-3.
[29] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 17
[30] Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 459. Richard Bancroft, A Survay of the pretended holy discipline, Contayning the beginnings, successe, parts, proceedings, authority, and doctrine of it; with some of the manifold, and materiall repugnances, varieties and uncertainties, in that behalf (London: John Wolfe, 1593), pp. 389-92.
[31] Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, pp.12, 253.
[32] Ibid., p. 260
[33] Usher, Reconstruction, ii. 342. The 'first copy" in Barlow says, "The Bishop of Peterborough brought a very foolish argument, with much disgrace to himself." (Usher ii. 338); the second copy has: "the Bishoppe of Peterborow came in with his arguments about Baptisme, which the King made voide to his great reproach..."
[34] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 16, citing BL Add. 8978, p. 94.
[35] P. MacCulloch, Sermons at Court, p. 110, n. 31
[36] Printed in Cardwell, History of Conferences, 151ff.
[37] See the lists of conclusions of the conference, e.g., SPD James I 4/14/16, "The Kingdom of Ireland, the Border of Scotland, & all Wales to be planted with schools and preachers as soon as may be".
[38] Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 459.
[39] Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 18; Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 459. Fincham's point (note 91) that sympathy and indulgence do not show that a bishop was "puritan" should be remembered.
[40] See the Calendar of sermons in MacCulloch, Sermons at Court.

An Introduction to Barlow's The Summe and Substance of the Conference.

2. The Commission

Was the publication of a account of the Hampton Court Conference Bancroft’s idea? Curtis leaves no doubt that “a few weeks after” the conference ended, Barlow was “commissioned by Bancroft to compile from his own notes and those of other conferees an account of the proceedings which could be published.” On might imagine from so clear a statement that the instructions had been preserved. In fact, the only information about the origins of The Summe and Substance comes from William Barlow’s own hand, and it is not at all as clear. It need only be noted in passing that he does not mention when he was asked to produce a summary of the conference. or that he was told to use the notes of other participants. He could have been asked before the conference began, or the day after it ended, or even after it was known that unauthorized reports were circulating: which it was is simply unknown. That such reports were in circulation is well known; Barlow himself printed three as an appendix to his book. He notes that “many copies” had been sent to him, of which he had chosen the least offensive.[1] But this does not show that he was writing specifically in answer to them. We will consider these “copies” further when we turn to Barlow’s sources. Because there is no evidence, any reason that can be given for the commissioning of a semi-official account of the conference will quite simply be a more or less well educated guess.
If he said too little about when and why he was given this task, Barlow might have said too much about who laid it on him. In the preface to The Summe and Substance, he stated that the task of writing it had been “first imposed” on him by John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose death was one of the reasons the appearance of the account was delayed. [2] However, Barlow also stated in his letter to Cecil of 12 May that "the charge" of publishing a true account of the conference had been put on him by the Bishop of London.[3] The apparent contradiction might be solved by ignoring one of Barlow’s statements, as Curtis did. It is however quite likely that Barlow was Whitgift’s choice for the task. The Archbishop died on February 29th, after which Bishop Bancroft of London continued or possibly even renewed the commission. Whitgift’s early interest in and patronage of Barlow makes it seem likely that the choice was his..
C. S. Knighton’s life of Barlow in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography does not need to be repeated here, but makes Whitgift’s patronage clear.[4] The ecclesiastical lawyer Richard Cosin who has supported Barlow’s education introduced him to Archbishop Whitgift, thereby laying the foundation for his advancement. Barlow became a chaplain to the Archbishop. In August 1596 was chosen to preach at Paul’s Cross in celebration of Essex’ victory at Cadiz.[5] The following year Whitgift saw to suitable preferment for him, but was unable to get him appointed as to a royal chaplaincy for some years. According to John Harington, Barlow preached many times before Queen Elizabeth, who said of one sermon, “of the plough”, “Barlow’s text might seem taken from the cart, but his talk may teach you all the court.”[6] In 1601, now a royal chaplain, he delivered two more official sermons. At Paul’s Cross on March 1st, the Sunday following the execution of the earl of Essex, he preached a sermon that incorporated an official explanation of the execution, in which Barlow carefully followed guidelines set out for him by Robert Cecil, the Secretary of State. In October he delivered the Latin sermon at the opening of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, a sermon “which many (especially puritans) did much mislike” and “called it (alluding to his name) ‘The Barley Loaf’”[7]. In the same year he published a reply to a book by one Thomas Wright against the Protestant religion.[8] Whitgift’s patronage and Barlow’s service in these sermons may explain why this rising cleric was chosen out of all the participants to prepare an account of the conference at Hampton Court in 1604.
Aside from Barlow’s own remarks in the preface to The Summe and Substance and his two letters to Lord Cecil and the entry in the Stationers’ Register, no information has survived about the reason the work was commissioned or when it was commissioned, nor (as we have seen) about when precisely it was published. Anything that might be said about these matters is speculative. Barlow states in the preface that the account of the Conference was “long expected”; he wrote the same to Cecil on 12 May. This certainly means that it was no secret that a report of the Conference was being prepared. Barlow also gives two reasons that this long expected work was delayed. The first was the death of John Whitgift. The Archbishop died on February 29th, which gives a terminus ante quem for the commission. The other was

an expectation of this late Comitial Conference, much threatened before and triumphed in by many; as if that regal and most honourable proceeding, should thereby have received his Counter–blast for being too forward.

“Comitial Conference”probably means Parliament, although we find in the OED that "comitial" was also used at the time for a general assembly or synod of presbyterians. The likely meaning is that Barlow expected something to be raised in the session of Parliament to undo the work that had been done at Hampton Court, though it is not clear why this should have delayed his book. A third reason for the delay, not mentioned in the preface, appears in the letters to Cecil. On May 12 Barlow requested that Cecil accept the dedication of The Summe and Substance. Sometime after the book was published, he sent a copy to Cecil, who had refused to accept the dedication withut reading the book and then “inhibited access” to Barlow, who would not take any other patron, and so published it without a patron
.Mark Curtis says that Robert Cecil’s refusal to accept the dedication to The Summe and Substance was ‘significant’. However, it was not so much that Cecil refused the dedication but that (as Pauline Croft put it) he “wriggled out of” it. Cecil might have had several reasons to avoid accepting the dedication, and none of them can prove, that he thought it was inaccurate. How could they? Cecil had not read or even seen The Summe and Substance, and could have had no opinion at all on its accuracy. Croft’s suggestion is that Cecil "wriggled out of" accepting the dedication to show that he "dissociated himself from the hardline conformists. Moreover, this was not the only commitment he avoided at that time. He was also careful to distance himself from those who disturbed the church with their refusal to use the prayer book or surplice, "evading the assiduous efforts of Sir Francis Hastings to lobby him just before the publication of the proclamation of July 1604.”[9]
Barlow was careful to state that The Summe and Substance was not a verbatim report of the sessions at Hampton Court but an extract and summary. Knighton sees this as a sign that Barlow had foreseen controversy, which likely. Te puritan understanding of a proper conference tended also defined what was acceptable as a record of the meeting. A petition of 1586 from "Some Students of the University of Cambridge" that asked for a "free disputation" on the question "Whether the Churches are to be governed by the Lord Bishops and their Chancellors, or Signories", notaries were to take down the arguments on either side so that they could be properly judged.” [10] One of the reasons the radical minister Henry Jacob refused to accept that the meeting at Hampton Court fulfilled the puritan request for a conference was that the report had been prepared by only one side. In the conference he modestly offered the report would be written up and approved by both sides. (The discussion would apparently be in writing as well).[11] It is not known whether any official notes were taken at the conference, since the records of the Privy Council in that period have been lost. No other official record of the meetings was published. We will return to the reaction to The Summe and Substance, in the next section, after concluding this one with a note of Barlow’s sources.
Barlow stated that for the first day’s meeting he “had no help, beyond mine owne,” but that “some of good place and understanding have seen it, and not controlled it, except for the brevity.” It is too bad that he does not name these persons of good place, since they apparently approved (did not control) his account. For the second and third day as well as his own notes he had those of several participants, who are named in the margin. They were: Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London, Thomas Ravis, Dean of Christchurch, Oxford; George Abbot, Dean of Winchester; Giles Tomson, Dean of Windsor; and John King, Archdeacon of Nottingham. None of these accounts have survived. Barlow was also was aware of other anonymous accounts of the conference, three of which he printed in an appendix and stated to be “untrue”.He does not mention that he used or knew of the accounts of Toby Matthew, the Bishop of Durham, and James Montagu, Dean of the Chapel Royal, which have survived, possibly because they were private letters. This strengthens the value of those two letters as independent eye-witness accounts of the conference.
We may note here that the marginal list of accounts the only hint in The Summe and Substance that George Abbot (later Archbishop of Canterbury) had been a participant in the conference. It seems likely that Abbot was present: the Harleian Account does mention Winchester among the deans, while an “Anonymous Account in favour of the Bishops”, Baker MSS M.m.1.45, f. 155-157, printed in Usher Reconstruction of the English Church, ii. 335-338, lists “Abbotts” among the “anti-puritans”. Neither Matthew nor Montagu give a list of the deans at the conference. I can think of no reason why Barlow did not list Abbot with the other deans on page1 except sloppiness. The dean of Salisbury, who is mentioned on page 3, is also left off the list.[12].

NOTES

[1] Barlow. Sig P1 recto.
[2] Barlow, Sig A2 recto.
[3] HMC Salisbury xv, p. 95.
[4]. ODNB, 3. 940-942
[5] This was was a preaching cross and open air pulpit by old St Paul's Cathedral in London.
[6] John Harington, Nugae Antiquae, ed. by Thomas Park (London: 1804), ii. 197-8.
[7] Ibid, ii. 197. Harington remarks that Barlow’s opponents did not realize “how much honour rhey give it in their scorn”, for in the O.ld Testament the barley loaf “signified Gideon’s sword, ordained to destroy the sicked” (see Judges 7.13-14), and in the New “by the blessing of our Saviour, it fed more thousands of men than this ofended” (see John 6.9).
[8] A defence of the articles of the Protestants religion, in aunsweare to a libell lately cast abroad, intituled Certaine articles, or forcible reasons, discouering the palpable absurdities, and most intricate errours of the Protestantes religion (London, for Mathew Law, 1601) STC1449
[9] Pauline Croft, "The Religion of Robert Cecil", p. 776.
[10] The Second Parte of a Register, vol. ii, p. 187.
[11] Jacob, A Christian and Modest Offer, pp. 5, 29.
[12] I am reminded that I have not yet posted a revised list of the clerical participants in the conference. This will come.

An Introduction to William Barlow's The Summe and Substance of the Conference

Note: With this post I begin to present the material about William Barlow's Summe and Substance from my thesis in what I hope is a more readable form. Sections will be posted as they are completed. After the elementary questions about the publication what I believe would be most useful is an annotated edition of Barlow's work, but I am not sure how practical that would be for posting on a blog. Either in that way or some other, the main point of this introduction will be to address the question of reliability that has been raised against Barlow's account.

In quotations the spelling has been modernized for the convenience of the readers.

An Introduction to William Barlow’s

The Summe and Substance of the Conference
Part I

The Hampton Court Conference ended on January 18th 1604. Then or sometime afterwards one of the clergy who had participated in the confreence, William Barlow, was commissioned to produce an account of the meetings. Working with his own notes and those of other participants, Barlow produced an account which was titled The Summe and Substance of the Conference. It was, he said,

an Extract, wherein is the Substance of the whole; intercourse of speeches, there occasioned, would cause prolixity without profit: what every man said, point devise, I neither could, nor cared to observe; the vigour of every objection, with the sum of each answer, I guess, I miss not:[1]

If it is only an extract, The Summe and Substance is still the longest and most detailed account we have of the Hampton Court Conference. The other accounts which have survived are for the most part private letters, with the exception of the anonymous account from Harleian MS 828, first printed by R. G. Usher in 1910, which at 5,400 words or so is about a third the length of Barlow’s account. The first edition of the Summe and Substance was a quarto volume of about 120 pages, containing a preface, “To the Reader”, the account of the conference, and an appendix of “copies”, that is, other accounts of the conference then in circulation which Barlow asserted were “untrue”.
Although it was long accepted as accurate and authoritative, Barlow's account has been also been accused of inaccuracy and bias. In recent times the latter opinion has gained ground, and other accounts have been put forward as correctives, so that as C. S. Knighton stated in his life of Barlow in the ODNB, “The extent to which Barlow’s summary does indeed convey the substance remains central to the historiography of the conference”.[2] It seems to me that this central question requires a simple and clear study of Barlow’s work, to measure it against the other pieces in the historical record of the conference.
This introduction to The Summe and Substance begins with a note of its publication history. and of the question of justy when it was published.. That leads us to ask who commissioned Barlow to do this work, and why Barlow was the one commissioned. With that groundwork laid the work itself can be examined.

1. The Publication of the Summe and Substance

Barlow’s work was entered by the bookseller Matthew Law with the Company of Stationers on 22 May 1604 in accordance with the law concerning book publishing. The entry was “under the hands of” Master Pasfield, Doctor Barlow, the Bishop of London, and the wardens of the company.[3] Law brought out two quarto editions in 1604 and one in 1605.[4] Three further editions of appeared in 1605, 1625, and 1638.[5] After September 1604 Robert Barker, the King’s Printer, issued a French translation, La conference tenuë à Hamptoncour in which Barlow’s account was bound with a translation of the new Canons, which Convocation had approved on June 25th and the King ratified on September 6th.[6] It is not known who made this translation or why; the title page states that it was printed in London, but the STC notes “i,e. France?”[7]
This is as good a place as any to note the early publishing history of The Summe and Substance. In 1655 Thomas Fuller copied Barlow's account almost verbatim in his Church History of Great Britain, though he cast it in the form of a dialogue. Another edition of The Summe and Substance was published in 1661.[8] In 1707 it was reprinted by the bookseller John Dunton in The Phenix, a collection of rare and interesting documents.[9] This reprinting omits the preface "To the reader" and the collection of other accounts at the end of Barlow's book. Edward Cardwell printed the description of the conference from James Montagu's letter of 18 January 1604 in the narrative portion of the History of Conferences, but included Barlow's account in the collection of documents which follows, calling it an "authentic" report. Cardwell did not explain why he made this choice: it may simply have been that Montagu's version of events is shorter than Barlow's. Cardwell included the preface, but not the appendix of anonymous accounts.[10] In recent work, Barlow has often been cited from Cardwell's edition.[11]
Publication Delayed
Barlow began his preface with an apology for the delay in publishing a work that had “been long expected; and long since it was finished.” The conference at Hampton Court ended on January 18th; the book was entered in the Stationers’ register on May 22nd and was presumably then ready for publication. Before examining the explanation Barlow offered for the delay, we must note some confusing evidence. In the ODNB life of Barlow, Knighton states that the draft appeared on 25 May, for which he cites STC 1456. This notes the entry of the book in the register on 22 May, for which “25”might be an error.
It would seem from this that Barlow’s book appeared in late May 1604, three months after the end of the conference, a delay long enough to need some explanation. However, in his important paper on the conference, Mark Curtis suggested that the delay was even longer, for The Summe and Substance “did not come from the press until August.” [12]
This dating appears to rest on the evidence of two letters from Barlow to Robert Cecil, the king’s Principal Secretary. In the first, written on 12 May, Barlow requested Lord Cecil to accept the dedication of the book, which was then ready to the press. He noted that “His Majesty is pleased with it”. The second letter, which is undated, is summarized as follows in the calendar:

He purposed the dedication of the accompanying book to Cecil, who required sight thereof before the edition; but was inhibited access to him, and it was called upon to the press, and was, after a thorough view by Sir Thomas Lake, allowed by my Lord of London. He would not take any other patron but Cecil, and therefore has sent it abroad without patronage. If it had been printed with Cecil's name, he trusts his carriage therein is such that Cecil would not have found dishonour by the book, or discredit by the compiler.[13]

The clear meaning of this letter is that the book which accompanied it had already been published, not that it was simply “ready to come from the press”. Barlow tells Lord Cecil not that he “was about to” publish the book but that he “has [already] sent it abroad.”.
That this was in August 1604 seems to be deduced from fact that the letter is dated in the Calendar, “1604, before August 20”. By itself that might suggest that the letter was written sometime in August 1604, but this idea is weakened by closer examination. It appears that there are many letters in the calendar are dated the same way and for the same reason. On August 20th 1604 Robert Cecil, who had been created Baron Cecil of Essenden on May 13th 1603, was made Viscount Cranborne; undated letters addressed to “Lord Cecil” are calendared as "before August 20.” As evidence for the publication of Barlow’s book, then, this date is a red herring. There is no reason to suppose that it came out much later than the end of May.[14]
One reason for taking note of the date of publication is that Curtis deduced from it the “chief purpose” for which Barlow had been commissioned to prepare an account of the conference, which was so that it would appear after the adjournment of Parliament and Convocation and so provide “an argument for compliance with Bancroft’s own scheme of ecclesiastical reform as that had been embodied during the summer in the Canons of 1604.”[15] If the publication was not delayed so long as that, such an interpretation needs to be reconsidered, at least. Another reason for questioning it is that it assumes that a semi-official account of the conference was Bancroft’s idea, a claim that there is reason to question.

Notes

[1] William Barlow, The Svmme and Svbstance of the Conference, which, it pleased his Excellent Maiestie to haue with the Lords, Bishops, and other of his Clergie, (at which the most of the Lordes of the Councell were present) in his Maiesties Priuy-Chamber, at Hampton Court. Ianuary 14. 1603 Contracted by William Barlovv, Doctor of Diuinity, and Deane of Chester. Whereunto are added, some copies, (scattered abroad,) vnsauory, and vntrue. (London. John Windet (and T. Creede) for Matthew Law, and are to be sold at his shop in Paul’s Churchyard, near St Austin’s Gater, 1604), Sig A3 recto.

[2] ODNB, 3.940-942, 941
[3] A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London 1554-1640 AD, edited by Edward Arber (London: privately printed, 1876) iii.110. “Master Pasfield” is Zacharias Pasfield, later a prebendary of St Paul’s.
[4] Short Title Catalogue, second edition: 1456, 1456.5 (both printed by John Windet and T. Creede), and 1457 (printed by Valentine Simmes)
[5] STC: 1457-1458.
[6] E B. Fryde et al, Handbook of British Chronology (London: Royal Historical Society, 1986); Gerald Bray, Anglican Canons, 1529-1947 Church of England Record Society (Woodbridge, Sussex: The Boydell Press, 1998) pp. lv-lix.
[7] STC, 1459, “A Londres [i.e. France?] : par Robert Barker, imprimeur de la tres-excellente Majeste du Roy, l’an 1604.”
[8] Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England ... 1641-1700, compiled by Donald Wing, second edition, B847.
[9] John Dunton, The Phenix, or a revival of scarce and valuable pieces from the remotest antiquity down to the present times, being a collection of manuscripts and printed tracts, nowhere to be found but in the closets of the curious, by a gentleman who has made it his business to search after such pieces. (London: for J. Morphew, 1707), pp. 139-180.
[10] Edward Cardwell, A History of Conferences and other proceedings connected with the revision of the Book of Common Prayer... 3rd edition (Oxford: University Press, 1849), pp.138-141, esp. p 138, note k, 167-212.
[11] As for example in Fincham and Lake, "The Ecclesiastical Policy of James I" and Collinson, "The Jacobean Religious Settlement".
[12] Mark H. Curtis, “Hampton Court and its Aftermath”, History: The Journal of the Historical Association XLVI (1961) 1-16, 4
[13] Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the most hon. the marquis of Salisbury, xvi (1933), 95, 242
[14] This is an opportunity to correct an oversight in my doctoral dissertation [The King’s Own Conference: A Reassessment of Hampton Court 1604 (Trinity College, Toronto: 2006), 150 -151], where without carefully examining Barlow’s second letter I had simply accepted Curtis’ statement that The Summe and Substance was not published untill August.
[15] Curtis, 3.