ABBOT 25 ABBOT, CHARLES, speaker of the House of Commons from 1802 to 1817, afterwards created Lord Colchester. See COLCHESTER. ABBOT, GEORGE, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born October 19, 1562, at Guildford in Surrey, where his father was a cloth-worker. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and was chosen Master of University College in 1597. He was three times appointed to the office of Vice-Chan cellor of the University. When in 1604 the version of the Bible now in use was ordered to be prepared, Dr Abbot s name stood second on the list of the eight Oxford divines to whom was intrusted the translation of the New Testa ment, excepting the Epistles. In 1608 he went to Scotland with the Earl of Dunbar to arrange for a union between the Churches of England and Scotland, and his conduct in that negotiation laid the foundation of his preferment, by attracting to him the notice and favour of the king. With out having held any parochial charge, he was appointed Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1609, was translated to the see of London a month afterwards, and in less than a year was made Archbishop of Canterburj^. This rapid preferment was due as much perhaps to his flat tering his royal master as to his legitimate merits. After his elevation he showed on several occasions firmness and courage in resisting the king. In the scandalous divorce suit of the Lady Frances Howard against the Earl of Essex, the archbishop persistently opposed the dissolu tion of the marriage, though the influence of the king and court was strongly and successfully exerted in the opposite direction. In 1618, when a declaration was published by the king, and ordered to be read in all the churches, per mitting sports and pastimes on the Sabbath, Abbot had the courage to forbid its being read at Croydon, where he happened to be at the time. As may be inferred from the incident just mentioned, Abbot was of the Protestant or Puritan party in the Church. He was naturally, therefore, a promoter of the match between the Elector Palatine and the Princess Elizabeth, and a firm opponent of the projected marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta of Spain. This policy brought upon him the hatred of Laud and the court. The king, indeed, never forsook him ; but Buck ingham was his avowed enemy, and he was regarded with dislike by the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I. In 1622 a sad misfortune befell the archbishop while hunting in Lord Zouch s park at Bramzill. A bolt from his cross-brow aimed at a deer happened to strike one of the keepers, who died within an hour, and Abbot was so greatly distressed by the event that he fell into a state of settled melancholy. His enemies maintained that the fatal issue of this accident disqualified him for his office, and argued that, though the homicide was involuntary, the sport of hunting Avhich had led to it was one in which no clerical person could lawfully indulge. The king had to refer the matter to a commission of ten, though he said that " an angel might have miscarried after this sort." A decision was given in the archbishop s favour; but to pre vent disputes, it was recommended that the king should formally absolve him, and confer his office upon him anew. After this the archbishop seldom appeared at the council, chiefly on account of his infirmities. He attended the king constantly, however, in his last illness, and performed the ceremony of the coronation of Charles I. A pretext was soon found by his enemies for depriving him of all his functions as primate, which were put in commission by the king. This high-handed procedure was the result of Abbjt s refusal to license a sermon preached by Dr Sibthorp, in which the king s prerogative was stretched beyond con stitutional limits. The archbishop had his powers restored to him shortly afterwards, however, when the king found it absolutely necessary to summon a Parliament. His pre sence being unwelcome at court, he lived from that time in retirement, leaving Laud and his party in undisputed ascendency. He died, at Croydon on the 5th August 1633, and was buried at Guildford, his native place, where he had endowed an hospital with lands to the value of 300 a year. Abbot wrote a large number of works; but, with the excep tion of his Exposition on the Prophet Jonah (1600), which was reprinted in 1845, they are now little known. His Geography, or a Brief Description of the Whole World, passed through numerous editions. ABBOT, GEORGE, known as " The Puritan," has been oddly and persistently mistaken for others. He has been described as a clergyman, which he never was, and as son of Sir Morris Abbot, and his writings accordingly entered in the bibliographical authorities as by the nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury. One of the sons of Sir Morris Abbot was, indeed, named George, and he was a man of mark, but the more famous George Abbot was of a different family altogether. He was son or grandson (it is not clear which) of Sir Thomas Abbot, knight of Easington, East Yorkshire, having been bom there in 1603-4, his mother (or grandmother) being of the ancient house of Pickering. He married a daughter of Colonel Purefoy of Caldecote, Warwickshire, and as his monument, which may still be seen in the- church there, tells, he bravely held it against Prince Eupert and Maurice during the civil war. He was a member of the Long Parliament for Tamworth. As a layman, and nevertheless a theologian and scholar of rare ripeness and critical ability, he holds an almost unique place in the literature of the period. His Whole Booke of Job Paraphrased, or made easy for any to tinder- stand (1640, 4to), is in striking contrast, in its concinnity and terseness, with the prolixity of too many of the Puritaii expositors and commentators. His Vindicice Sabbathi(lGil, 8vo) had a profound and lasting influence in the long Sabbatic controversy. His Brief Notes upon the Whole Book of Psalms (1651, 4to), as its date shows, was posthumous. He died February 2, 1648. (MS. collections at Abbey- ville for history of all of the name of Abbot, by J. T. Abbot, Esq., F.S.A., Darlington; Dugdale s Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656, p. 791; Wood s AtJienae (Bliss), s. v.; Cox s Literature of the Sabbath; Dr James Gilfillan on The Sabbath; Lowndes, Bodleian, B. Museum Catal. s. v.) (A. B. G.) ABBOT, ROBERT. Noted as this Puritan divine was in his own time, and representative in various ways, he has- hitherto been confounded with others, as Robert Abbot, Bishop of Salisbury, and his personality distributed over a Robert Abbot of Cranbrook; another of Southwick, Hants ; a third of St Austin s, London ; while these succes sive places were only the successive livings of the one Robert Abbot. He is also described as of the Archbishop s- or Guildford Abbots, whereas he was in no way related, albeit he acknowledges very gratefully, in the first of hi* epistles-dedicatory of A Hand of Fellowship to Helpe Keepe ovt Sinne and Antichrist (1623, 4to), that it was from the archbishop he had "received all" his "worldly mainte nance," as well as "best earthly countenance" and "fatherly incouragements." The worldly maintenance was the pre sentation to the vicarage of Cranbrook in Kent, of which the archbishop was patron. This was in 1616. He had received his education at Cambridge, where he proceeded M.A., and was afterwards incorporated at Oxford. la 1639, in the epistle to the reader of his most noticeable book historically, his Triall of our Ckurch-Forsakers, he tells us, "I have lived now, by God s gratious dis pensation, above fifty years, and in the place of my allotment two and twenty full." The former date carries us back to 1588-89, or perhaps 1587-88 the
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