Thomas Bilson

Thomas Bilson (1547-1616) was Anglican bishop of Worcester and bishop of Winchester. He with Miles Smith saw the "King James Bible" into print.

Life to 1603

His parentage was German, and William Twisse was a nephew. [http://www.scionofzion.com/kjvtransqual.htm] [http://www.wilderness-cry.net/bible_study/translators/tbilson.html] [http://www.go-newfocus.co.uk/pages.php?section=21&subsection=2&artID=18] He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. ["Concise Dictionary of National Biography"] From 1580 to 1596 he was Warden (head) of Winchester College. [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42044] His pupils there included John Owen, and Thomas James, whom he influenced in the direction of patristics. [Mordechai Feingold, "History of Universities, Volume XXII/1" (2007), p. 23.]

On becoming bishop of Worcester in 1596, he found Warwick uncomfortably full of recusant Catholics. [Patrick Collinson, "The Elizabethan Puritan Movement" (1982), p. 441.] [Anthony Boden, Denis Stevens, "Thomas Tomkins: The Last Elizabethan" (2005), p. 73.] For appointment in 1597 to the wealthy see of Winchester, he paid a £400 annuity to Elizabeth I of England. [Hugh Trevor-Roper, "William Laud" (2000 edition) p. 11.] Christopher Hill speaks of his "unsavoury reputation". [Christopher Hill, "Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England" (1969 edition), p. 225.]

Courtier to James I

Bilson gave the sermon at the coronation on 25 July 1603 of James VI of Scotland as James I of England. While the wording conceded something to the divine right of kings, it also included a caveat about lawful resistance to a monarch. This theme was from Bilson's 1585 book, and already sounded somewhat obsolescent. [Peter E. McCullough, "Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching" (1998), pp. 104.]

At the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, he and Richard Bancroft implored King James to change nothing in the Church of England. [W. B. Patterson, "King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom" (1997), p. 104.] He had in fact advised James in 1603 not to hold the Conference, and to leave religious matters to the professionals. [Alan Stewart, "The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & I" (2003), p. 191.] The advice might have prevailed, had it not been for Patrick Galloway, Moderator of the Scottish Assembly. [Collinson, p. 451.] Later, in charge of the "Authorized Version", he composed the front matter with Miles Smith, his share being the dedication. [Alister McGrath, "In The Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible" (2001), p. 188, p. 210.]

He bought the manor of West Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, in 1605. [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41935] Later, in 1613, he acquired the site of Durford Abbey, Rogate, Sussex. [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41688]

He was "ex officio" Visitor of St John's College, Oxford, and so was called to intervene when in 1611 the election as President of William Laud was disputed, with a background tension of Calvinist versus Arminian. The other candidate was John Rawlinson (1576-1631). Bilson, taken to be on the Calvinist side, found that the election of the high-church Laud had failed to follow the college statutes. [Trevor-Roper, p. 43.] He in the end ruled in favour of Laud, but only after some intrigue: Bilson had difficulty in having his jurisdiction recognised by the group of Laud's activists, led unscrupulously by William Juxon. Laud's party had complained, to the King, who eventually decided the matter himself, leaving the "status quo" and instructed Bilson. [Thomas A. Mason, "Serving God and Mammon: William Juxon, 1582-1663, Bishop of London, Lord High Treasurer of England, and Archbishop of Canterbury" (1985), p. 27.] [Kenneth Fincham, "Early Stuart Polity" p. 188 in "The History of the University of Oxford" (1984).]

He was appointed a judge in the 1613 annulment case of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex and his wife Frances nee Howard; with John Buckridge, bishop of Rochester, he was one of two extra judges added by the King to the original 10, who were deadlocked. This caused bitterness on the part of George Abbot, the archbishop of Canterbury, who was presiding over the nullity commission. Abbot felt that neither man was impartial, and that Bilson bore him an old grudge. [Anne Somerset, "Unnnatural Murder: Poison at the Court of James I", pp. 159-160.] Bilson played a key role in the outcome, turning away the Earl of Essex's appeal to appear a second time before the commission, and sending away Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton who was asking on behalf of Essex with a half-truth about the position (which was that the King had intervened against Essex). [Somerset, p. 164.]

The outcome of the case was a divorce, and Bilson was then in favour with Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, a favourite in the court who proceeded to marry Frances. In August 1615 Bilson was made a member of the Privy Council. [http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/diary/1eng.html] In fact, though this was the high point of Bilson's career as courtier, and secured by Somerset's influence, he had been led to expect more earlier that summer. Somerset had been importunate to the point of pushiness on behalf of Bilson, hoping to secure him a higher office, and had left Bilson in a false position and James very annoyed. This misjudgement was a major step in Somerset's replacement in favour by George Villiers, said to have happened in physical terms under Bilson's roof at Farnham Castle that same August. [Alan Stewart, "The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & I" (2003), p. 271.] [Somerset, p. 286.]

Ecclesiastical polity, political thought

His "True Difference" of 1585, as well as aiming at the Jesuits, and replying to William Allen's "Defence of the English Catholics" (Ingoldstadt, 1584),http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc02.html?term=Bilson,%20Thomas] was a theoretical work on the "Christian commonwealth", and enjoyed publishing success. He defended episcopacy, following on from John Bridges. [Robert Zaller, "The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England" (20070, p. 342.] [http://www.fromdeathtolife.org/chistory/england3.html] The "Perpetual Government" of 1593 was a systematic attack on Presbyterianism. [http://anglicanhistory.org/scotland/jdowden/paddock/02.html] He was also hawkish against recusant Catholics. [Michael C. Questier, "Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580-1625" (1996), note p. 189.]

His writings took a nuanced and middle way in ecclesiastical polity, and avoided Erastian views and divine right, while requiring passive obedience to authority depending on the context. [Whitney Richard David Jones, "The Tree of Commonwealth, 1450-1793" (2000), p. 99.] [Irving Ribner, "The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare" (2004), p. 307.] His efforts to avoid condemning Huguenot and Dutch Protestant resisters have been described as "contortions". [Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, "Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-league Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England" (1996), p. 112.] It has been said that the immediate purpose of "True Difference" was as much to justify Dutch Protestants resisting Philip II of Spain, as to counter the Jesuits' attacks on Elizabeth I of England. [Hugh Dunthorne, "The Netherland's as Britain school of Revolution", p. 141, in "Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of Ragnhild Hatton" (1997).]

He conceded nothing to popular sovereignty, but said that there were occasions when a king might forfeit his powers. [Michael Brydon, "The Evolving Reputation of Richard Hooker: An Examination of Responses, 1600-1714" (2006), pp. 132-3.] According to James Shapiro, [James Shapiro, "1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare" (2005), p. 177.] he "does his best to walk a fine line", in discussing 'political icons', i.e. pictures of the monarch..Glenn Burgess considers that in "True Difference" Bilson shows a sense of the diversity of "legitimate" political systems. [Glenn Burgess, "The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603–1642" (1993), pp. 104-5.]

Influence

Henry Parker drew on both Bilson and Richard Hooker in his pamphlet writing around 1640. [Michael Mendle, "Henry Parker and the English Civil War: The Political Thought of the Public's 'Privado' " (2003), p. 63.]

Bilson argued for Protestant resistance to a Catholic prince. A century later, Richard Baxter drew on Bilson in proposing and justifying the deposition of James II of England. [William M. Lamont, "Richard Baxter and the Millennium" (1979), p. 29.] What Bilson had envisaged in 1585 was a "wild" scenario or counterfactual, a Catholic monarch of England; [William Lamont, "Puritanism and Historical Controversy" (1996), pp. 56-8.] its relevance to practical politics came much later.

Theological controversy

A theological argument over the Harrowing of Hell led Hugh Broughton to attack Bilson personally, in the "Descensus controversy". Bilson's literal views on the descent of Christ into Hell were orthodox for "conformist" Anglicans of the time, while the Puritan wing of the church preferred a metaphorical or spiritual reading. [Bruce Gordon, Peter Marshall, "The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe" (2000), pp. 118-9.] Broughton, a noted Hebraist, was excluded from the translators of the King James Bible, and became a vehement early critic. The origin of Broughton's published attack on Bilson as a scholar and theologian, from 1604, ["Declaration of general corruption, of religion, Scripture, and all learninge: wrought by D. Bilson".] is thought to lie in a sermon Bilson gave in 1597, which Broughton, at first and wrongly, thought supported his own view that hell and paradise coincided in place. From another direction the Catholic controversialist Richard Broughton also attacked Anglican conformists through Bilson's views, writing in 1607. [Willem Nijenhuis, "Adrianus Saravia (c. 1532-1613): Dutch Calvinist, First Reformed Defender of the English Episcopal Church Order on the Basis of the Ius Divinum" (1980), p. 182.] [Charles W. A. Prior, "Defining the Jacobean Church: The Politics of Religious Controversy, 1603-1625" (2005), pp.49-50 and note.]

Works

*"The True Difference Betweene Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion" (1585)
*"The Perpetual Government Of Christ's Church" (1593)
*"Survey of Christ's Sufferings for Man's Redemption and of His Descent to Hades Or Hell for Our Deliverance" (1604) against the Brownist Henry Jacob

Family

It was his son, the lawyer Sir Thomas Bilson (1579-1630), who was nicknamed "Sir Nullity Bilson", because his knighthood followed on the outcome of the Essex annulment case. [http://www.the-miscellany.co.uk/jacobean/person?id=226] [Somerset, p. 168.]

References

*William M. Lamont, "The Rise and Fall of Bishop Bilson", The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (May, 1966), pp. 22-32

Notes