Saint and Sinner
Lancelot Andrewes,1555-1626. By Paul A. Welsby. (S.P.C.K., 25s.)
WE are apt to think of Wolsey and Andrewes as worlds apart, because their lives are separated by the RefOrmation. Yet Andrewes was born only twenty-five years after Wolsey died. These two biographies enable us to compare their careers as ecclesiastical politicians. The conventional verdict is that Wolsey was a sinner, a statesman who happened to be an ecclesiastic; and that Andrewes was a saint,a Churchman involved in politics without becoming contaminated. Yet the two have more in common than is usually realised. We think of Wolsey as the great exemplar of pluralism and nepotism : the scandal of his life in these respects, the textbooks tell us, had no
little share in bringing about the Reformation in England. But Andrewes managed to be simuk taneously Dean of Westminster, Master of Pero broke College, Cambridge, prebendary of St. Paul's and of Southwell, vicar of a large Londoo parish and chaplain to the Archbishop of Canter' bury and to the Queen. At Westminster he allowed the Abbey buildings to fall into decaY whilst keeping his own house in good repair. Andrewes, it is true, had no illegitimate off; spring to provide with ecclesiastical benefices, an', -he denounced nepotism to the Convocation 01 Canterbury. But soon after his appointment .t° Westminster he made one of his brothers It' Registrar, a life appointment. Another brother, Roger, after a Fellowship at Pembroke, followed him round to many high preferments in each of the three dioceses of which Lancelot was bishop. He was finally appointed Master of Jesus College by Andrewes when he was Bishop of Ely. Roger Andrewes was a far more undesirable character than Wolsey's son, and after his brother's death was forced to resign the Mastership of Jesus in consequence of embezzling college funds. The Reformation had not transformed the Church. Dr. Welsby summarises Andrewes's career as a bishop, mildly, by saying `if he was not as bad as the worst of his colleagues, he was also not as good as the best.' The worst was perhaps the author of The Practice of Piety, who was charged With simony, bribery, extortion and 'incontinency
• • • palpably proved.'
Wolsey is best remembered for his last words, If I had served God as diligently as 1 have done the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.' But Andrewes prayed, 'Deliver me from making gods of Kings,' and there was reason for the prayer. Under James I he 'accepted Wholeheartedly the full doctrine of divine Tight.' Kings are gods, he declared in a sermon; their enemies are God's enemies. He practised what he preached. His Archbishop tells us that Andrewes at first inclined to Arminianism, 'but being told the King's Judgment of it had made Shew to desist from broaching any such thing.' This is part of what Dr. Welsby calls his 'holiness in words but timidity in action.' Wolsey was dis- graced because, after using all the devices of delay and evasion, he refused to flout the accepted standards of his day by granting Henry VIII the annulment of his marriage. Lancelot Andrewes Was also involved in a famous divorce case—not one like Henry's which touched the welfare of the realm, but one in which the King was pas- sionately interested.' Unlike Wolsey, Andrewes did not sacrifice career to principle : he allowed himself to be persuaded or browbeaten by James into dissolving the marriage of the Earl of Essex in order that his wife might marry the royal favourite. The contrast is the more pointed in that Archbishop Abbot showed the courage of a Wolsey, which Andrewes lacked, and opposed the div9rce to the last.
'During the dozen years when [Wolsey] con- trolled the religious jurisdiction of the kingdom,' Mr. Ferguson tells us, 'not one heretic was con- signed to the flames.' Andrewes probably had Share in the last burnings for heresy in England : he certainly advocated burning at a time when Public opinion was more enlightened. Against Papists Andrewes wrote with savagery. Ten years after the Gunpowder Plot he said in the pulpit : Into the fire with their bowels! Would they make Men's bones fly about like chips? Hew their bones Iii sunder. . .'; and much more to the same effect.
Mr. Ferguson writes for the general reader. His emphasis is on the pageantry of Wolsey's career, the dramatic aspects of his fall. On these he writes movingly. But there is little analysis and no new interpretation. The book is based entirely on printed sources, and where evidence IS scanty—as for Wolsey's early career—the pages are padded out with local colour and human- interest stories. Dr. Welsby's book is very different. It is a more modest but far more scholarly work, drawing on a wide range of Published ahd unpublished material and written With judgment and imagination. My quotations are one-sided, selected for purposes of com- parison: Dr. Welsby is balanced and fair in assessing Andrewes's more positive qualities. His book is a real contribution to historical under- standing and should be the definitive biography.
CHRISTOPHER HILL
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