An Unrecognized 'Critique' of John Selden's Historie of Tithes: John

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An Unrecognized ‘Critique’ 87

Chapter 6 An Unrecognized ‘Critique’ of John Selden’s Historie of Tithes: John Gregory’s 1634 Edition of View of the Civile and Ecclesiasticall Law by Thomas Ridley

Mordechai Feingold

When John Gurgany sat down to compose a brief account of John Gregory’s life and death, he was determined to secure literary immortality for his deceased friend. Just as the son of Sirach, who ‘raised his Monumental Pillar to the Patri- arch’ with the exclamation ‘Laudemus Viros gloriosos’ (Sirach 44:1), so, too, Gur- gany sought to exalt Gregory—‘the Miracle of his Age’. Gurgany’s determination was not only edifying but necessary, considering Gregory’s remarkably un- eventful life. Born on 10 November 1607 in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, to parents ‘of mean Extraction and Estate’, Gregory’s talents seem to have been discovered by Charles Crooke, formerly student (fellow) of Christ Church and professor of rhetoric at Gresham College who would become rector of Amer- sham in 1621. Crooke had tutored William Drake, son of Francis Drake—who represented Amersham in Parliament—and in 1624 Crook arranged for Grego- ry to accompany the younger Drake to Christ Church as a servitor. There, the two were tutored by George Morley, successively bishop of Worcester and Win- chester. By 1626 Drake had departed for the Middle Temple, but Gregory re- mained in Oxford (though Morley appears to have become derelict in his tutorial duties). Gregory graduated BA on 11 October 1628 and shortly thereaf- ter was appointed college librarian. He received his MA on 22 June 1631 and was ordained deacon on 23 September 1632 and priest three months later—both by John Bancroft, bishop of Oxford. Following his ordination, Brian Duppa, dean of Christ Church, appointed Gregory as chaplain (petty canon) of the cathe- dral; it is not clear why Gregory was never awarded a studentship. Neverthe- less, his meagre stipend was augmented in 1635, when the college conferred on him the living of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford. The contours of Gregory’s life have been laid out in Alastair Hamilton’s in- formative entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.1 Yet, in it he refers only fleetingly to Gregory’s first publication—an edition of Thomas Rid-

1 A. Hamilton, ‘Gregory, John (1607–1646)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), online via .

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004429321_007 88 Feingold ley’s View of the Civile and Ecclesiasticall Law (1634). What seems to be over- looked is the extent to which some of these notes were designed to controvert John Selden’s History of Tithes, a plan that miscarried—so I argue—owing to Gregory’s reluctance to follow the guidelines assigned to him and thereby to cast aspersions on a scholar whom he greatly admired and on a historical narrative he found generally compelling. For all these reasons, Gregory dissem- bled, or at least deliberately reined in the force of his ‘refutation’, by 1. choosing to forgo any claim that Selden—whose name virtually escapes mention—was mistaken on any issue, or 2. inserting equivocal remarks that worked to miti- gate the force of his own evidence. Before reconstructing Gregory’s narrative and tactics, however, I would like to establish the context that gave rise to his edition of Ridley’s book. Gregory’s reputation as a scholar was established early. Gurgany recalled how, during their joint exercises for the bachelor’s degree, Gregory’s ‘Worth, like the Rising of the Sun, began to discover it self, darting forth such fair Hopes and Glimmerings of future Perfection’. Gregory’s prowess was due not only to his natural gifts but to his indefatigable industry. He had intimated to Gurgany that ‘for divers years he studied 16 of every 24 hours, and that with so much appetite and delight, as that he needed not the Cure of Aristotle’s drowsiness to awake him’. According to another contemporary, Gregory’s ‘Candle was not out one night’ for full eleven years.2 Poverty undoubtedly made study especially arduous; it was said he ‘lived to the twenty fourth year of his age, before he could buy Books’. Like other impoverished scholars, Gregory undoubtedly relied on the generosity of friends and, especially, on the resources of Christ Church and the Bodleian libraries. Poverty, and the resultant dependence on patronage, proved decisive in shaping Gregory’s literary career. In late May 1629, William Laud, then bishop of London, dispatched to the Bodleian Library the Barocci collection of manuscripts, which the chancellor of the university, the earl of Pembroke, had pur- chased at Laud’s urging. In an addendum to the letter notifying him of the imminent arrival of the gift, Laud requested that the matrixes of the Greek font—which Sir Henry Savile had bequeathed to Oxford—be loaned to Cam- bridge, where ‘a verye learned, painfull & able printer’ was preparing to print ‘some manuscripts which Dt. Lindsell hath bye hime’.3 Laud referred to an edition of the Greek Church Fathers envisaged by Augustine Lindsell, then dean

2 John Gurgany, ‘A Short Account of the Authors Life and Death’, in The Works of the Reverend and Learned Mr. John Gregory, 4th ed. (London, 1684), sig. A7 (second pagination); David Lloyd, Memoirs of the Lives … of those … that Suffered … for the Protestant Religion … in Our Late Intestine Wars (London, 1668), p. 87. 3 William D. Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library Oxford, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1890), pp. 70–71.