John Prideaux - Later Life

Later Life

Prideaux was one of the miscellaneous theologians summoned by the lords' committee 1 March 1641, to meet in the Jerusalem Chamber and discuss plans of church reform under the lead of John Williams. In the autumn Charles, in filling the five vacant sees, promoted four bishops and appointed Prideaux to the fifth, that of Worcester. Prideaux was consecrated on 19 December 1641, and installed a few weeks later; he was thus engaged at Worcester when Williams and his eleven colleagues assembled to make their protest, 29 December, and so escaped impeachment. He was one of the three peers, all bishops, who dissented when the bill for excluding the spiritual peers from parliament was read a third time, 5 February 1642. That the commons were not hostile to Prideaux was shown by his nomination as one of the Westminster Assembly in April 1642. He never attended any of its meetings, and, returning to Worcester, gradually identified himself with the royalists; so that in the list of the Assembly in the ordinance of June 1643 his name no longer appears.

He maintained himself in his diocese until the end of the war, and was in Worcester when the city capitulated to Thomas Rainsborough. Deprived of what remained to him of the episcopal estates, he sought a refuge with his son-in-law, Dr. Henry Sutton, rector of Bredon, Worcestershire. His last years were spent in comparative poverty, and he had to sell his library to provide for his family. He died of fever at Bredon on 29 July 1650 and was buried in the chancel of the church there 15 August.