Lancelot Andrewes

English religious leader and theologian

• Born: 1555
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: September 26, 1626
• Place of death: London, England

With Jeremy Taylor and Richard Hooker, Andrewes helped establish the Anglican Church. He served, through his writings and conduct, as a model of the ideal Anglican cleric.

Early Life

Lancelot Andrewes (LANS-uh-laht AN-drooz) was born in London in 1555. His mother and his father, a well-to-do merchant, were from Suffolk, but they had moved to London before Andrewes’s birth. A healthy, gifted child, Andrewes impressed Francis Walsingham (his parents’ neighbor and friend, later Queen Elizabeth’s principal secretary), who convinced Andrewes’s parents not to apprentice him but rather to fit him for the life of a cleric and scholar. In 1561, accordingly, Andrewes entered a free grammar school founded by the Merchant Taylors. Although he was not considered brilliant, he had a great facility for foreign languages, excelling in Latin and Greek, and proved to be a diligent student blessed with a wonderful memory.

Because of his outstanding academic record, Andrewes was awarded a scholarship to the newly founded Pembroke Hall at Cambridge University in 1571. He was to remain at Cambridge for the next eighteen years. After he graduated in 1575, Andrewes received a competitive fellowship in 1576, was ordained deacon in 1580 and priest in 1581, and culminated his university career when he was named master of Pembroke Hall in 1589. His Cambridge years strengthened the disciplined lifestyle and the religious zeal and devotion Andrewes had already cultivated. He regularly rose early and studied until noon. His interest in theology led him to a study of patristic writings, and his linguistic abilities enabled him to learn many more foreign languages (reputedly as many as fifteen).

While at Cambridge, Andrewes also sharpened his skills as a preacher and teacher. He served as a catechist, offering well-attended weekend lectures. His sermons, then as later, were detailed explications of the biblical text under study; he subjected each word and phrase to a thorough exegesis. In addition to his considerable abilities as a lecturer, he was a spiritual shepherd to his audience and often followed his sermons with individual counsel and advice. By the time he became master of Pembroke Hall, Andrewes was the epitome of the Anglican priest, in the pulpit, in the parish, and in his private life.

Although his years at Cambridge left him a serene and devout cleric, however, Andrewes hardly found the Cambridge intellectual and theological scene idyllic. The Anglican church faced opposition from both the Catholics and the Puritans with their emphasis on the presbyterian form of government. At Cambridge, the Puritans had been especially influential, and it was not until 1570 that future archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift triumphed over them. Yet, while the Cambridge power structure attempted to impose religious order and conformity on the students, Puritan ideas persisted, and Andrewes certainly was exposed to them. Critics and biographers differ, in fact, about the extent to which Andrewes may have inclined to Puritanism, but if he ever had Puritan leanings, they do not appear in his post-Cambridge sermons and devotional prose.

Life’s Work

In 1589, Andrewes left Cambridge, though he remained master of Pembroke Hall. He moved to London, where Walsingham’s intervention had secured for him a living at St. Giles. The move was symbolic, for it reflected the end of his academic life and the beginning of his life’s work. Andrewes frequently preached at St. Giles and at St. Paul’s, where he served as residential canon; when his pastoral duties and his exemplary lifestyle brought him to the attention of the court, he was made a chaplain to Archbishop Whitgift and to Queen Elizabeth I . Elizabeth offered him two bishoprics (at Salisbury and Ely), but he refused them, primarily as a protest against her custom of keeping sees vacant and appropriating the revenue.

Shortly before the queen’s death in 1603, however, Andrewes did accept an appointment as dean of Westminster, a position that also entailed responsibility for Westminster School. There he instilled in his students, as he had at Pembroke Hall, a love for learning. Under his stewardship, moreover, the school achieved a sound financial footing, partly as a result of Andrewes’s private contributions to its coffers.

After James I came to the throne, Andrewes accepted, in 1605, the bishopric of Chichester, whence he was transferred to Ely in 1609 and to Winchester in 1619. During the reign of James, who was himself something of a theologian, Andrewes succeeded Richard Hooker as the defender of the Anglican faith and played an influential role in determining the course of Anglicanism.

When James called the Hampton Court Conference in 1605, Andrewes was a participant and a supporter of James’s efforts to use the Anglican church to the power of the throne. James believed that the doctrine of divine right depended on episcopacy, or rule by bishops, with its similar emphasis on order and hierarchy, evident in the slogan, “No Bishop, No King.” On the other hand, the presbytery, a much more democratic religious institution whose members voted on matters of policy and doctrine, was considered a threat to royal authority. Andrewes’s support of episcopacy stood him in good stead with James, who chose him in 1607 to play a significant role in producing the new biblical translation known as the King James Bible (1611). As an expert in Hebrew, Andrewes was appointed to chair a group of scholars working on the books of the Old Testament from Genesis through the Second Book of Kings.

The year 1605 also marked the beginning of a religious controversy. In that year, a group of Catholic nobles, together with a mercenary named Guy Fawkes, conspired to kill the king and Parliament and foment a Catholic revolution. This conspiracy came to be known as the Gunpowder Plot . In the wake of the plot, an oath of allegiance to James was instituted in England, but the Roman Catholic Church, especially Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, adamantly opposed it. In response to Bellarmine’s written criticism, King James published Triplicinodo triplex cuneus: Or, An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance (1607), which Bellarmine answered the following year in his Responsio Matthaei Torti (1608; Matthew Tortus’s response: Tortus was one of Bellarmine’s servants).

James, an amateur though gifted theologian, was no match for Bellarmine, a Jesuit expert in religious controversy. While the king set about revising his Apology, he also asked Andrewes to refute Bellarmine. Both James’s revised An Apology for the Oath of Allegiance (1609) and Andrewes’s Tortura Torti (1609; Tortus’s torment) were published soon thereafter. In his book, Andrewes explored the relationship between the oath of allegiance and the issue of royal supremacy, examined the papal claim to depose monarchs and to release Catholics from political oaths, and reviewed the circumstances surrounding the Gunpowder Plot. His discussion of civil and spiritual power in turn was answered by Bellarmine’s Apologia Roberti S.R.E. Cardinalis Bellarmini, pro responsione sua ad librum Jacobi (1609; Apology for the Responsio, 1610), which occasioned another rebuttal by Andrewes. In that rebuttal, the Anglican church emerged as a church allied to Roman Catholic history and sacraments yet allowing for thought independent of Catholic dogma or papal doctrine.

While Andrewes’s loyalty to James and his unswerving devotion to the Anglican cause produced Tortura Torti, that loyalty and religious conformity were also responsible for two acts that, from a later perspective, reflect badly on Andrewes and mark him as a product of his age. In the first instance, James, intent on enforcing religious orthodoxy, became incensed at the heretical opinions of Bartholomew Legate, who maintained that Jesus Christ was a “mere man,” though “borne free from sinne.” Legate was brought before the Consistory Court, which included Andrewes, in 1612, and despite the absence of laws that would justify the burning of heretics, Legate was burned to death. There is no record of Andrewes’s opposition to the verdict; in fact, he mentioned the event in the context of eliminating heresy.

The second act involved Andrewes’s response to the celebrated Essex divorce case of 1613, in which James sought ecclesiastical support for a divorce that would free Lady Frances Howard from her marriage to the earl of Essex. Lady Howard wanted to marry Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, one of the king’s favorites. Although Archbishop George Abbott opposed the divorce, Andrewes was among the bishops who supported James’s wishes.

The same adherence to authority and compliance with “policy” affected Andrewes’s later part in the inquiry into Archbishop Abbott’s accidental killing of a groundskeeper while hunting deer. Although the archbishop was not subject to secular laws, there was a question about his continuation in office. Andrewes’s defense, that each of the bishops could be in a similar situation, seems charitable and practical but also, unfortunately, suggests self-serving privilege.

In addition to his theological and political activities and writings, Andrewes is famous for his private devotional works, few of which were published during his lifetime. In fact, his sermons first appeared in print in 1628. What readers have since found most appealing are the three books of private prayers, which were translated from the Latin and Greek in which Andrewes wrote them. The first and most famous of the books, The Manual of Private Devotions (1648), was originally intended for Andrewes’s exclusive use and was his constant companion up until his death on September 26, 1626, in London.

Significance

To evaluate Lancelot Andrewes is to see him in three related roles—as preacher, as prelate, and as author. In an appreciative essay, T. S. Eliot, a twentieth century writer with distinctly seventeenth century affinities, terms Andrewes the “first great preacher of the English Catholic Church.” Eliot’s perceptive contrast between the sermons of the well-known John Donne and the relatively obscure Andrewes serves to identify the latter’s strengths. Whereas Donne was a “personality” whose sermons served more as a means of self-expression, Andrewes submerged his personality as he delved into the biblical text. Whereas Donne’s sermons were laden with emotion, those of Andrewes were more restrained, intellectual, and contemplative.

Biblical exegesis was Andrewes’s goal, and he could, according to Eliot, “take a word and derive the world from it.” Eliot’s admiration for the theologian stems partly from his own stylistic similarity to Andrewes, for both are metaphysical, given to puns, figures of speech, irony, allusions, wit, and dense writing so tight that it is, unlike Donne’s work, difficult to quote out of context. In a sense, while Donne is modern in his somewhat confessional style and content, Andrewes is more traditional, more concerned with the text than with himself.

As a prelate, Andrewes was theologically the model of the Anglican churchman, for he was unswerving in his pursuit of the middle way between authoritarian Catholicism and democratic Presbyterianism, the two threats to the independent yet hierarchical English church. Dedicated to his calling, his behavior was consistent with his principles and his expectations of other members of the clergy. Andrewes was, in fact, so unworldly that he did not concern himself with politics unless the church was involved. He was not, despite the power he might have wielded, ambitious for advancement—an unusual trait in his time. Controversy did not appeal to him, for he was by nature conciliatory, and he was drawn reluctantly into the Bellarmine furor that established him as spokesperson for the English church.

Andrewes never visited the Continent, choosing to remain throughout his life in the country of his birth. Because of his theological scholarship and linguistic abilities, however, Andrewes was respected by continental scholars such as Isaac Casaubon, who moved to England and became his close friend, and Hugo Grotius , who met him in London. Andrewes also enjoyed the friendship of Sir Francis Bacon and of George Herbert , the metaphysical priest and poet. In fact, despite his prominent position, itself a danger in his time, Andrewes had few contemporary detractors.

Andrewes’s reputation as a writer rests on Tortura Torti, his sermons, and his books of prayers, but his writings are more significant in terms of their metaphysical qualities and the clues that they provide about his life, beliefs, and behavior. In a sense, for modern biographers intent on revealing their subjects “warts and all,” Andrewes is a challenge, for he seems too good to be true. As a result, the private prayers, which stress his awareness of his own sin, have been read as an indication of some secret sin, and his lack of enemies and critics has been considered an indication of his unwillingness to take a stand. Such interpretations seem strained and are perhaps reactions to the saintly image perpetuated by his contemporaries.

The very absence of contemporary criticism is for some biographers a problem. Either Andrewes was so saintly that everyone loved him, or his weakness of character led him to compromise or keep silent when his voice was needed; in either case, he was not likely to make powerful enemies. Certainly, his zealous support of the divine right of kings and his tendency to comply with his sovereign’s will and caprices led him to take some positions that are questionable from a modern perspective, but he was very much a child of his age, an age that required the loyalty that was at once his strength and his weakness. It is to Andrewes’s credit that his learning, scholarly reputation, and devout life made him the model Anglican prelate and that he was able to help the developing Church of England steer a course between Catholicism and Presbyterianism.

Bibliography

Andrewes, Lancelot. Selected Writings. Edited by P. E. Hewison. Manchester, England: Fyfield Books, 1995. A selection of Andrewes’s sermons and letters, some complete and others excerpted.

Dorman, Marianne. Lancelot Andrewes, 1555-1626: A Perennial Preacher in the Post Reformation English Church. Tucson, Ariz.: Iceni Books, 2004. Dorman analyzes a cross section of doctrinal and religious themes contained in Andrewes’s sermons.

Eliot, T. S. “Lancelot Andrewes.” In Selected Essays. 2d ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950. An appreciation of Andrewes’s sermons, particularly as they compare to those of Donne. Eliot regards Andrewes as one of the intellectual founders of the Anglican Church.

Lossky, Nicholas. Lancelot Andrewes the Preacher, 1555-1626: The Origins of the Mystical Theology of the Church of England. Translated by Andrew Louth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. An English translation of a French book defining Andrewes’s significance within the mystical traditions of the Anglican Church.

Owen, Trevor A. Lancelot Andrewes. Boston: Twayne, 1981. A concise biographical and literary introduction, one of the biographies in Twayne’s English authors series.

Welsby, Paul A. Lancelot Andrewes, 1555-1626. London: S. P. C. K., 1958. A well-balanced biography of Andrewes; also contains chapters on his friends, his theology, and the structure of his published prayers.