prebend of Ealdstreet in the diocese of London; in July of the same year he was nominated archdeacon of Cleveland, which he resigned about a year before his death; and on 15 March 1549–50 he was installed a prebendary of Winchester. He was also archdeacon of Ely, resigning before 1560. A friend to the Reformation, he was in disgrace during the reign of Mary, and was suspended from the wardenship of All Souls', but received in 1557 the rectory of Hayes, together with the chapel of Norwood, in Middlesex. He was restored to All Souls' in 1559, after the death of Mary, received a prebend at Salisbury, and on 15 Oct. of the same year was nominated dean of Winchester. On 17 Oct. 1561 he was admitted a fellow of the College of Physicians. He died at his house in Warwick Lane, London, on 21 March 1564–5, and was buried in the chancel of the church of Great Stanmore.
[Munk's Coll. of Physicians, i. 63; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1712; Le Neve's Fasti Eccles. Anglicanæ; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 101; Lansdowne MS. 981 f. 27.]
WARNER, JOHN (1581–1666), bishop of Rochester, son of Harman Warner of London, merchant tailor, was baptised at St. Clement Danes in the Strand on 17 Sept. 1581. He became demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1599, and was elected fellow of that college in 1604. He proceeded M.A. in 1605, and D.D. in 1616. He was rector of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, London, from 1614 to 1619, and was nominated prebendary and canon of Canterbury in 1616. He was instituted rector of Bishopsbourne, Kent, in 1619, rector of Hollingbourne. Kent, in 1624, and rector of St. Dionis Backchurch, London, in 1625.
Warner was a devoted adherent of the church and monarchy. In 1626 he preached in Passion week before the king at Whitehall a sermon on Matthew xxi. 38: 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him,' which nearly occasioned his impeachment by parliament, and induced him to obtain for safety the king's pardon, which is still extant. In 1633 be became chaplain to Charles I and dean of Lichfield. In the same year he attended the king at his coronation in Edinburgh. Finally, in 1637, he was promoted to the bishopric of Rochester. In March 1639-40 he preached a sermon in Rochester Cathedral on Psalm liiiv. 23, 'Forget not the voice of thy enemies,' against the puritans and rebels, to which allusion made in 'Scot Scout's Discovery.'
Warner attended at York in 1640 the king's council of peers, at which only one other prelate was present. He took part in the convocation which was called together on the opening of the Short parliament of 1640. When that parliament was dissolved, and the convocation continued its sittings under royal license, Warner assisted Laud in framing new canons. Warner joined in the declaration made on 14 May 1641 by the bishops to maintain the existing constitution of church and state. On 4 Aug. following he was impeached with other bishops by the House of Commons, under the stature of praemunire, for taking part in the convocation of 1640 and making new canons. In December 1641 Warner, with eleven other bishops, was committed to prison, but the impeachment was afterwards dropped, owing to the admirable defence made by Warner through Chaloner Chute, the counsel whom he had selected for the defence of the bishops. On 13 Feb. 1642, when the bishops were excluded by statute from the House of Lords, Warner defended their rights with much ability and force of argument; Fuller remarked that 'in him dying episcopacy gave its last groan in the House of Lords.' Sequestration of his lands and goods followed in 1643, and Warner had to leave his palace at Bromley in disguise. For three years he led a wandering life in the west of England.
By Charles's command he published in 1646 a treatise on 'Church Lands not to be sold, or a Necessary and Plain Answer to the question of a Conscientious Protestant whether the lands of Bishops and Churches in England and Wales may be sold.' On 4 Feb. 1648-9, within a week after the execution of Charles I, he preached and afterwards published anonymously a sermon on Luke xviii. 31: ' Behold we go up to Jerusalem.' The volume was entitled 'The Devilish Conspiracy,' and in it he it inveighed against the fate which had befallen his royal master.
Finally, in 1649, on payment of some 5,000l. in fines, the sequestrations on his property were discharged; but to the last he refused to take the oaths to the usurping government, as he considered it to be. At the Restoration Warner and eight other sequestrated bishops who had survived came forth from their exile and resumed, as a matter of course, the government of their dioceses. In 1661 parliament recalled the bishops to the House of Lords, and once more, on 11 Feb. 1662, Warner was able to address his clergy in Rochester Cathedral. He died on 14. Oct. 1666 aged 86, and was buried in Merton's Chapel in Rochester Cathedral, where a fine monument exists to his memory.
