Letters to Severall Persons of Honour Part 28

CXVI

Sir Dudley Carleton remained as Amba.s.sador to Venice until 1616, when he was succeeded by Sir Henry Wotton, but this letter must have been written before Donne's ordination in January, 1615. "My Lord" is, of course, the Earl of Somerset.

CXVII

This, and the next letter, may belong to the same period as the preceding letter to Sir Robert Ker. "_Monte Magor_" is George de Montemayor, whose "Shepherdess Felismena," in the Spanish pastoral romance of "Diana," tells the same story as "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." A translation into English by Bartholomew Yonge was published in 1598, but Donne may have read it in the original.

CXIX

On November 4, 1616, Charles, the Duke of York, was created Prince of Wales.

CXX

This letter, like CXVI, seems to belong to the period immediately preceding Donne's entrance into the church, when Sir Robert Ker's advice as to the best way of retaining Somerset's interest was constantly in request.

CXXI

To George Gerrard, and belonging to the winter of 1612-13. Cf. XCI, which also carried an enclosure. The letter enclosed with the present letter may have been addressed to Lord Clifford (Cf. CVI) or, more probably, to Rochester.

CXXII

This and the next two letters were written in April, 1627, and relate to the same incident. This letter is the first, and the next the last of the series.

Dr. Richard Montagu, who had been chaplain to James I, was the highest of high-churchmen, and a believer in the doctrine of the divine right of kings in its extreme form. He is said to have looked upon reunion with the Roman church as quite possible. In the ecclesiastical politics of the time he was an ardent supporter of Laud, then Bishop of Bath and Wells. In the early part of 1627 Montagu published his _Apello Caesarem_, in spite of the opposition of Archbishop Abbot, who had refused to license it. Abbot thereupon instigated an attack on Montagu in the House of Commons. Montagu was committed to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms, and the House pet.i.tioned the King for his punishment. Charles not only refused his consent, but marked his resentment of the att.i.tude of Archbishop Abbot and the Commons by making Montagu Bishop of Chichester. Abbot returned to the charge in a sermon which gave the King great offense. At this juncture Donne was appointed to preach before the court. Laud was present and seems to have thought, and to have persuaded the King, that Donne's sermon indicated sympathy with Abbot, whose break with the King was now open. At any rate Laud directed Donne to send a copy of his sermon to the King.

The letters tell the rest of the story so far as Donne is concerned.

Abbot, on his refusal to license Dr. Sibthorpe's sermon, _Apostolical Obedience_, was deprived of his archiepiscopal authority, which was given to a commission of five bishops.

CXXIII

As Donne was born and bred in the Roman church, this reference to the religion he was born in, is explicable only if we understand Donne to be thinking of the Anglican and Roman communions as branches of one Catholic Church, divided in government, but spiritually one.

CXXIV

There is in the British Museum a copy of Donne's _Poems_, 1633, which belonged to Charles I, and which contains MS. notes in his hand. "The Bishop" here is Laud; "My Lord Duke" is Buckingham.

CXXV

This letter, and CXXVII, below, which should precede it, relate to the occasion of the delivery of the first of the _Two Sermons Preached before King Charles, upon the xxvi verse of the first Chapter of Genesis_, which stand at the head of Donne's published Sermons. James I died on March 27th, 1625. One week later, Donne, at the command of the new King, preached at the Court. His extreme nervousness and almost painful diffidence are clearly implied in these two letters to Sir Robert Ker.

CXXVI

I am unable to give any satisfactory account of this letter. The form of the address indicates that it was written not earlier than 1625 when Ker became Master of the Privy Purse. "My great neighbour" may possibly be "the B" of CXXVIII.

CXXVIII

"The B" to whom allusion is here made, is George Montaigne, Bishop of London since 1621, and a prominent member of the party of which Laud, now Bishop of Bath and Wells, was already the leader. In 1628 Montaigne's witty suggestion that the King had power to throw "this mountain" into the see of York was rewarded by his appointment as Archbishop of York, Laud succeeding him as Bishop of London. Montaigne warmly defended Montagu against the attacks of Archbishop Abbot. (See note to CXXII, above.)

CXXIX

This letter, written less than two weeks before his death, is addressed to one of the most intimate of the friends of Donne's later life. Mrs. Thomas c.o.kain, or c.o.kayne, had been abandoned by her husband, who left her with a houseful of children, at Ashbourne, the Derbyshire estate of the c.o.kaynes, and went to London where the rest of his life was spent in the compilation of an English-Greek lexicon, which was finally published in 1658, twenty years after his death.

Donne lived long enough to perform the Lenten service of which he writes.

On February 12th, 1631, he preached at Court the last and most famous of his sermons, _Deaths Duell, or, A Consolation to the Soule, against the Dying Life, and living Death of the Body, Delivered in a Sermon at White-Hall, before the KINGS MAIESTIE, in the beginning of Lent, 1630[1], By that late Learned and Reverend Divine,_ JOHN DONNE, _Dr. in Divinity, and Deane of S. Pauls, London_.