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THE CONFERENCE
147

the Church, and should express his opinion as to what concessions it might be well to offer to tender consciences or irritable minds. The Archbishop Whitgift of Canterbury, himself not a little of a Calvinist in doctrine, attended, and with him were Bancroft, Bishop of London, a man of more liberal views; Tobie Matthew, Bishop of Durham, an Oxford scholar of fame and a singularly able administrator, who had also defended the English Reformation with learning and adroitness against the Jesuit Edmund Campion; Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, the renowned author of "The Perpetual Government of Christ's Church;" Bishops Rudd of St. David's, Babington of Worcester, Watson of Chichester, Dove of Peterborough, Robinson of Carlisle. Eight Deans were summoned—Montague, Dean of the Chapel, and the Deans of Christ Church, St. Paul's, Worcester, Salisbury, Chester, Windsor, and Westminster, with Dr.Field and Dr. King. Four clergy only represented thePuritan position—Reynolds, whom his friends regarded as the "oracle of his time for acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, councils, and fathers," Sparkes, Chaderton, and Knewstubbs.

On the first day the bishops and five deans alone met the King "in the King's privy chamber, one of the large rooms of Henry VIII.'s suite of state apartments, on the east side of the Clock-court, which were altered in the reign of George II."[1]

The King "propounded six points . . . three in the Common Prayer-Book, two for the bishops' juris-

  1. Law, "History of Hampton Court Palace," vol. ii. p. 32.