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A Note on Gilbert Sheldon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Florence Higham
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Extract

In 1883 Osmund Airy published in the British Quarterly Review some ‘Notes on the reign of Charles II’, in which he stressed the fear of popery still felt by the average Englishman. He instanced this by describing the feelings aroused by the king's issue of an Indulgence in December 1662. ‘Charles’, he wrote, ‘was not long left in ignorance of the feelings he had roused … The meeting, as we should say, spoke at once through its chairman’. ‘We were fortunate enough some while ago’, Airy continues, ‘while searching in the British Museum on this subject, to find a letter which we believe has not anywhere been noticed, addressed to the King by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon, who appears to represent completely the savage side of the Anglican Church’. Airy proceeded to quote the letter in full, noting ‘this is written within three months after the proposal for comprehension, probably in January’. The letter is violent in tone, referring, for instance, to ‘that most damnable and heretical doctrine of the Church of Rome, whore of Babylon’, and warning the king that by his action he may draw upon himself and the kingdom in general ‘God's heavy wrath and indignation’. A number of later historians have followed Airy in attributing the letter to Sheldon, though not without surprise at the unlikely language.

Type
Bibliographical Note
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , October 1963 , pp. 209 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1963

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References

page 209 note 1 British Quarterly Review, lxxvii, 317–36. Airy refers to the article in two footnotes to his edition of Burnet's, History of my own times, Oxford 1897, i. 313, 350.Google Scholar

page 209 note 2 British Quarterly Review, lxxvii, 331 f. Airy's dating is confused. He wrote ‘In his speech at the opening of parliament in 1662, December 26, he [the king] suggested and Ashley Cooper put in the form of a Bill, a scheme for the comprehension of Dissenters’. In fact a declaration was issued on 26 December, but parliament, adjourned since the previous May, did not meet until 18 February 1663, when Charles in his opening speech referred to the Declaration, adding, ‘I doubt not but I shall have your concurrence therein’: Lords Journals, xi, 478. The Bill, giving the Declaration the force of law, was debated in the Lords but dropped, after the Commons, in an Address, had expressed their disapproval of the Indulgence and of any measure legalising dissent.

page 210 note 1 Cal. S. P. Venetian 1623–5, 90 f., Alvise Valaresso to the Doge and Senate, 1/11 August 1623; Cal. S. P. Dom. 1623–5, 48, 52, Calvert to [Conway], 8 August and [Conway] to Calvert, 11 August 1623; cf. Conway to Calvert, 4 September (ibid., 73) enquiring why there has been no public disavowal. According to the article on Abbot in the D.N.B., ‘The letter was clearly proved to be a forgery, but whether it was the work of Abbot's enemies or of his too enthusiastic friends has never been known’.

page 210 note 2 The supplication of all the Papists of England to King James, at his first comming to the Crowne, for a Tolleration of their religion: Brit. Mus. Collection of Pamphlets, 1642.

page 210 note 3 In the 1650s the letter appeared in A. Wilson's The History of … the life and reign of James I [1653], the Cabala [1653]; Thos. Fuller, Church History [1655] and Rushworth's Historical Collections [1659]. In the Cabala it was attributed to the archbishop of York.

page 210 note 4 J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata [1693], 143. The contemporary arguments as to authorship are summarised in a footnote to Brewer's, J. S. edition of Fuller's, Church History, Oxford 1845, v. 546n.Google Scholar

page 210 note 5 The title page runs: Fair Warning: or XXV Reasons against Toleration and Indulgence of Popery with the Archbishop of Canterbury's Letter to the King and All the Bishops of Ireland's Protestation to the Parliament to the same Purpose, With an Answer to the Roman Catholiks reason for Indulgence: Also the Excellent Reasons of the House of Commons against Indulgence: with Historical Observations thereon. The tract was printed in London for S.U.N.T.F.S. [British Museum, Ref: T. 1877 (1)] In The Declaration of Indulgence 1672, London 1908, 38, Bate gives this tract as his reference for attributing the letter to Sheldon. The protestation of the Irish bishops was in fact a version of the judgment of the 12 Irish prelates, at the time of the Graces, in 1627.

page 211 note 1 The Hunting of the Romish Fox and the quenching of sectarian firebrands being … collected out of the memorials of eminent men both in Church and State … ed. Sir James Ware, Dublin 1683; The Declaration of the Nobility, Gentry and Commonalty at the Rendezvous at Nottingham, Nov. 22 1688 … followed by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury's address to his Majesty … [1689]. I am much indebted to Mr. Christophers for these references and for permission to quote from his thesis [deposited 1960].

page 211 note 2 ‘Add hereunto what you have done in sending the Prince unto Spaine without the consent of your council, the privity and approbation of your people’: Church History, Oxford 1845, v. 548Google Scholar.

page 212 note 1 The Hunting of the Romish Fox, 169.

page 212 note 2 Cosin Correspondence (Surtees Society, lv), ii. 101 f.

page 212 note 3 Cf. Sheldon's letter to his fellow-bishops on the occasion of the passing of the second Conventicle Act, with some ‘Animadversions thereupon’, in which a critic complained that ‘altogether passing by the Papists… He only fixes a character of odium upon his Protestant brethren’: The Act of Parliament against Religious Meetings, proved to be the Bishops' Act (1670), 6.