Life and Works of Henry King. 253 



work, which is very becoming an Historian, yet, methinks, you carry 

 the matter too far sometimes both in being over severe to your Friends 

 & too favourable to your enemies. Sometimes you appear too 

 severe to your Friends, as pticularly, ... in your Reflections on 

 Bp. King (Chichester), . . . and some others. I loiow not what 

 obligation you are under to discover the Infirmities of these, who 

 were some of them very good & great men. And perhaps all the 

 grounds you have for reflecting on some of them, may be some 

 foolish stories told by An. Wood, whose Cynical temper prompted 

 him to say the worst he could of Every Body, for which he has been 

 so often & so justly condemned." So, some twenty-two years after 

 the appearance of Wood's charge, here is a vigorous protest against 

 according it any weight, — or, at least, an interesting impeachment 

 of Wood's authority in general. However, this slander, if slander 

 it was, was deeply rooted and persistent, for the present writer found 

 the tradition flourishing in Chichester, in January, 1912, where a 

 venerable verger, encountered in the Cathedral, vouchsafed the in- 

 formation that Bishop Henry King, still remembered as "the Bishop 

 during the siege," had been strongly in sympathy with the Puritans 

 and Puritanism, and yet was very severely handled by the Puritans 

 after the capture of Chichester. So a brief examination of facts 

 and documents on both sides must be undertaken. 



Some few points in King's life seem to justify the charge, at first 

 sight. On one occasion in Parliament it was expressly asserted that 

 "there can be no superstition proved upon the Bishop of Chichester," ^ 

 as if he were notoriously low church in his views. And a bit of 

 evidence in support of the contention that the general parliamentary 

 or Puritan opinion of him was favorable is perhaps the fact that he was 

 not included in Col. John White's scurrilous black-list entitled "The 

 First Century of Scandalous, Malignant Priests. . . . Or, A Narration 

 of the Causes for which the Parliament hath Ordered the Seques- 

 tration of the Benefices of several Ministers," published Nov. 19, 

 1643. Again, there is a possible taint of Puritanism in some of his 

 poetry .2 Further, he was, it is quite true, promoted to the Bish- 

 opric at a most dangerous juncture when a compromise candidate 

 was the only safe appointee, one "generally beloved by all disengaged 

 people," as Fuller phrases it.^ And finally, and this is the one really 



^ " Sussex Archaeological Collections," 1852, V, 50. 



2 Cf. "Being waked out of my sleep by a snuff of Candle," "Sic Vita," 

 My Midnight Meditation," and "The Dirge." 



3 "Worthies," I, 202. 



