Durham E-Theses The life and times of Isaac Basire. Brennen, Colin How to cite: Brennen, Colin (1987) The life and times of Isaac Basire., Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1689/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Abstract of Ph.D. thesis, The Life and Times of Isaac Basire, by Colin Brennen. The aim of this thesis is to reconstruct the life and times of Isaac Basire, mainly from his letters and papers preserved in the Library of Durham Cathedral, and to show the issues which dominated his life, the wider issues in which he was involved. First, it examines Basire's contribution to the transformation of the Church of England between 1630 and 1660, in the development of an Anglican mythology which sought to establish the Ecclesia Anglicana as part of the historic Catholic Church. Second, it considers Basire's fascination, as an Anglican, with the Greek Orthodox Church, a fascinatibn which has its place in the long tradition of the Anglican interest in Orthodoxy. And third, it follows the process of the restoration of the Church through Basire's activi- ties in the North as Archdeacon of Northumberland, and to show the important part played by archdeacons in the restoration of the Church. Isaac Basire was born in France in 1607, and studied at Leiden University where his teachers seem to have influenced him towards the Arminian wings of the Dutch and English Churches. He came to England and was ordained in 1629 by Thomas Morton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, who, on his translation to Durham in 1632, took Basire with him as his domestic chaplain, and later appointed him to two livings in the diocese, and, finally, in 1644, to the Archdeaconry of Northumberland. In 1647, however, because of his devotion to King and Church, Parliament forced him into exile. After journeying with his pupils through France, Italy, Sicily and Malta, Basire sailed for the Levant on a self-imposed mission to proclaim the excellence of the Church of England and its role as a bridge between the divided Church of the West and East. He met with many of the leaders of the Greek Orthodox Church, whom he left with copies of the Prayer Book Catechism, translated into their own languages, convinced that these of themselves would act as agents of evangelism. In 1654, while acting as chaplain to the English Ambassador in Constantinople, he was invited by George RakOczi II, the Prince of Transyl- vania, to become Professor of Theology in the University of Alba Julia. He was unable to do much there, partly because of strong opposition from the more radical Calvinist wing in the Church, which he opposed in Transyl, vania as he had opposed it in England, and partly because his stay was overshadowed by the threat of Turkish invasion. When the Turks invaded the country, Basire and his pupils were scattered, while the city and University of Alba Julia were destroyed. After the Prince's defeat and death in the battle of Gyala, Basire returned to England in 1661, and took up his duties as Archdeacon of Northumberland and helped Cosin restore the Church in the North. From then until his death in 1676 his life was spent in a ceaseless round of activity as parish priest, Cathedral prebendary, Archdeacon and royal chaplain. He was laid to rest, at his own request, without pomp or ceremony, in the churchyard of the Cathedral he had loved and served so well. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ISAAC BASIRE — by — COLIN BRENNEN Submitted to the University of Durham for the degree of Ph.D. 1987 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. The research for this thesis was conducted under the guidance of the Department of Theology TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 EARLY YEARS 8 THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN 12 ENGLAND AND ORDINATION 19 MARRIAGE AND PREFERMENT 25 THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE CONTINENT 33 FIRST YEARS IN EXILE 52 JOURNEY TO ITALY 61 THE NEAR EAST 73 TRANSYLVANIA 92 HOME AGAIN 129 THE CATHEDRAL CHAPTER 144 CATHEDRAL VISITATIONS 153 RESTORING THE CHURCH 160 PAPISTS AND SECTARIES 185 CHAPTER AND FAMILY AFFAIRS 199 IN JOURNEYING OFTEN 213 SACRILEGE ARRAIGNED 219 MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL AND ACADEMIC 229 DEAD MAN'S REAL SPEECH 238 FAMILY AFFAIRS 246 LAST DAYS 256 APPENDIX A 262 APPENDIX B 264 APPENDIX C 269 APPENDIX D 271 APPENDIX E 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY 276 Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Quotations have been reproduced in modern English except where doing so would alter the sense of the passage. INTRODUCTION Among the lesser figures of the Church of England in the seventeenth century, Isaac Basire, Archdeacon of Northumberland, must be regarded as one of the most interesting. Born and bred a Frenchman, baptised into the Huguenot Church, he was ordained into the Anglican ministry, and became a loyal and devoted adherent of the King and of the Church of England, for both of whom he suffered deprivation and exile. Restored at the Restoration to the preferments of which he had been deprived during the Civil War, he went on to play a considerable role in the restoration of the Church of England in the north of the country. The most striking feature of his life was his staunch belief in the excellence of the Anglican Church; it was like the needle of a compass, always pointing towards unity and salvation. Because it claimed to be both Catholic and Reformed, steering a middle course of strength and not of weak- ness, it seemed to him that the Church of England had a unique role to play in any bringing together of a divided Christendom. He found the essence of its distinctive teaching in the Prayer Book Catechism, with its emphasis on what seventeenth century Anglicanism called 'practical divinity'. During his exile, when he travelled through the Near East, having discussions with local church leaders, both Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, he always left behind with them a copy of the Catechism, translated into their own language, quite confident that the book would speak for itself, and act as a powerful advocate for the excellence of the Church of England. In an account he gave to Antony Leger, a former chaplain to the Dutch Embassy in Constantinople, of his activi- ties in the East, he went on to say: All this is outwardly very little. But apart from the demonstration of the divine power, in uplifting means in themselves so frail and feeble, especially among a people like this, which still walk in darkness and dwell in the shadow of death, our English Martyrology makes me hope that something will come of it, since indeed, the English Reformation began with a simple Catechism. (1) Basire made his contribution to the thinking and development of the Church of England in three areas. First, he played his part in the formulation of the classical definition of Anglicanism in the seventeenth century, a definition which was part of the conservative Protestant counter reformation (2) against the Calvinist Reformed inheritance. Basire encountered at Leiden the debate within Dutch Protestantism between Arminianism and Calvinism, as seen by his teachers Vossius and Polyander, and it was from them that he obtained a good grounding in the Arminian order of things, to be encapsulated in his share of the debate between Calvinist and Arminian in the Transylvanian Church. In the years before the Civil War the opposition fastened its attention on the Arminians and their new-fangled innovations, which Pym and his friends believed to be an underhand re-introduction of Romanism. Their cry was to get back to the Church as it had been under the 'Great Queen', to them the hall- mark of the true Church of England. But there was a great difference between the Elizabethan and Restoration Churches. The former had a distinctly Puritan flavour, with an almost general acceptance of the doctrine of predestination. Even Whitgift, the 'hammer of the Puritans' in his effort to obtain conformity, was a Calvinist in his theology. The turning point in the transformation of the Church of England came during the Civil War and in the years before the Restoration. With Rome and (1) W.N. Darnell, The Correspondence of Isaac Basire (London, 1831), p.124. An undated copy of a reply to a letter of Leger. (2) For a full account of this assault on Calvinism, see 0. Chadwick, The Reformation (London, 1964), pp.211-247. Geneva on either side of them, those who had gone into exile sought to establish the true, independent identity of Anglicanism; it was neither simply a reformed section of the Roman Catholic Church, nor was it a conservative branch of the Reformed Churches, but it had its own identity, going back to the earliest days of Christianity in England.