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
[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.
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