Life and Works of Henry King. 241 



before 1649 or 1650. For the exactitude of Walker's language here 

 seems to have been unappreciated or misunderstood, heretofore. 

 He clearly means that during the Rebellion, or Civil Wars, King was 

 hunted from his friends' houses ^ and driven into hiding in various 

 more or less remote regions ; while during the Usurpation, or after 

 the Commonwealth had been established and things had become 

 settled once more, (or, as Wood puts it, "after episcopacy was silenced 

 by the long parliament"), he passed "most" of the time with Sir 

 Richard Hobart and later with Lady Salter. So evidently it is for 

 the first few years after 1643 ^ that information has been lacking; 

 and information covering those years can now be furnished. 



An unpleasant page in Bishop Henry King's biography is involved 

 and must be written. Documents apparently in the form of a legal 

 deposition are preserved in the Bodleian (Rawl. MS. D. 1361, fol. 

 389 et seq.), bringing against his eldest son, John, a charge of seduction 

 in the case of the youngest daughter, "E.," of a certain "Mr. O." 

 (Onslow?), of "A." in "S." about June i, 1646. The documents 

 are all on the plaintiff's side and hence leave us in ignorance of what 

 Henry King said in his son's defence ; consequently he should not be 

 too hastily condemned. But the charge is circumstantial and, in 

 its first form, convincing ; if it is true to the facts, Henry King as well as 

 his son must have acted a very discreditable part in the affair. The 

 elder King is alleged to have wrung his hands and lamented exceed- 

 ingly, when informed of the matter, and at first to have urged his 

 son to confess all and make all possible reparation ; later, to have at- 

 tempted to negotiate financially with "Mr. O." ; and finally to 

 have "roundly" denied the whole charge, challenged the plaintiff 

 to produce evidence, and counseled his son to ignore the affair and 

 go forward with his courtship of a certain noble damsel whom he 

 had long been wooing. Some injudicious additions to "Mr. O.'s" 

 earlier straightforward account, doubtless introduced with a view 

 to furnishing specific proof of the younger King's baseness, rather 

 weaken the plaintiff's case in later statements ; but no record of the 

 outcome of the suit, if the case was ever brought to trial, has been 

 preserved. This episode is chiefly or only valuable as supplying 



^ For " Friend's House" can mean nothing else ; cf. citation from Walker's 

 MS., p. 242, Note I, inf. 



2 Immediately after the capture of Chichester, Dec. 29, 1642, Bishop King 

 was confined to his Episcopal Palace there and was later transferred to a 

 London prison for a short period. — "Castles and Mansions of Western 

 Sussex," by D. G. C. Elwes, 1876, p. 60. 



Trans. Conn. Acad., Vol. XVIII. 17 November 1913. 



