Civil War: The History of England Volume III Read Free

the discussion on specific matters to continue.
    In the subsequent debate the king seems to have been shrewd and judicious. He did not accede to the puritans’ demand for Calvinism, but he did accept their proposal for an improved translation of the Bible. This request bore magnificent fruit in the King James translation published later in the reign. The delegates then discussed the problem of providing a learned ministry, and the difficulties of dealing with issues of private conscience. The king was willing to concede certain matters to the puritans, in the evident belief that a middle way would encourage unity within the Church. In the bitter weather the fires of Hampton Court roared, while the king sat in his furs; the bishops, and even the puritan delegates, were also clad in fur cloaks.
    All seemed to be proceeding without much incident until Reynolds recommended that the bishops of the realm should consult with the ‘presbyters’. At this, the king bridled. ‘Presbyter’, the term for the elder or minister of a Christian church, had for him unfortunate connotations. He had previously been outraged by the Presbyterian divines of Scotland, who did not always treat His Majesty with appropriate respect; they inclined towards republicanism and even egalitarianism. One of them, Andrew Melville, had called him to his face ‘God’s silly vassal’.
    James now told Reynolds and his colleagues that they seemed to be aiming ‘at a Scottish Presbytery which agreeth with monarchy as well as God and the devil’. He added that it would mean ‘Jack and Tom, and Will and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council and all our proceedings’. He concluded with advice to Reynolds that ‘until you find that I grow lazy, leave it alone’. His motto from this time forward would be ‘no bishop, no king’. He observed, as the puritan delegates left his presence, that ‘if this be all they have to say, I shall make them conformthemselves, or I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse’.
    Two days later the king summoned the bishops for a further conference. He then called back the puritans, and ordered them to conform to the whole of the orthodox Book of Common Prayer reissued forty-five years before. The conference was over. The impending translation was the greatest benefit of the proceedings but, altogether, the conference cannot be counted a great success. It had now emerged that there was perhaps not one national Church, after all, but at least two Churches with different meanings and purposes.
    The king was, as ever, delighted with his performance at Hampton Court. ‘I peppered them soundly,’ he said. The bishops had told him that he had spoken with the power of inspiration. ‘I know not what they mean,’ Sir John Harington wrote to his wife, ‘but the spirit was rather foul-mouthed.’ The king had said, at one point, ‘A turd for this argument. I would rather my child were baptized by an ape as by a woman.’ He also chastised the puritans by remonstrating ‘Away with your snivelling!’
    He was, however, in many respects a learned man. All his life he had argued, and debated, with his Scottish clergy. He delighted in theological controversy, and according to an early observer ‘he apprehends clearly, judges wisely and has a retentive memory’. The king also believed himself to be a master of the written word and composed volumes on demonology, monarchy, witchcraft and smoking. On his accession medal he is crowned with a laurel wreath, a sure sign of his literary pretensions. He even replied to ‘rayling rhymes’ published against him with his own doggerel verse. In 1616 he collected all of his prose writings into a folio volume, the first English monarch ever to do so. So he became known, sometimes sarcastically, as ‘the British Solomon’.
    John Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, now close to death, realized that the conclusion of the Hampton Court conference was by no