James Ussher - English Civil War

English Civil War

In 1640, Ussher left Ireland for England for what turned out to be the last time. In the years before the English Civil War, his reputation as a scholar and his moderate Calvinism meant that his opinion was sought by both King and Parliament. After Ussher lost his home and income through the Irish uprising of 1641, Parliament voted him a pension of £400 while the King awarded him the income and property of the vacant See of Carlisle. Despite occasional differences, he remained loyal to Strafford, and pleaded with the King for his life: unlike some of his episcopal colleagues, he insisted that the King was absolutely bound in conscience by his promise to spare Strafford. The King did not take his advice, but clearly afterwards regretted not doing so, as shown by his reference on the scaffold to Stafford's unjust sentence which I suffered to take effect.

In early 1641 Ussher developed a mediatory position on church government, which sought to bridge the gap between the Laudians, who believed that bishops were divinely ordained and a separate order from priests and deacons, and the presbyterians, who wanted to abolish episcopacy entirely. His proposals, not published until 1656, after his death, as The Reduction of Episcopacy, proposed a compromise where bishops operated in a presbyterian synodal system, were initially designed to support a rapprochement between Charles and the parliamentarian leadership in 1641, but were rejected by the King. They did, however, have an afterlife, being published in England and Scotland well into the eighteenth century. In all, he wrote or edited five books relating to episcopacy; the last two, treatises on the Ignatian epistles, were particular scholarly achievements that have largely survived modern scrutiny.

As the middle ground between King and Parliament vanished in 1641–1642, Ussher was forced, reluctantly, to choose between his godly Calvinist allies in parliament and his instinctive loyalty to the monarchy. Eventually, in January 1642 (having asked parliament's permission), he moved to Oxford, a royalist stronghold. Though Charles severely tested Ussher's loyalty by negotiating with the Catholic Irish patriots, the Primate remained committed to the royal cause, though as king's fortunes waned Ussher had to move on to Bristol, Cardiff, and then to St Donat's. In June 1646, he returned to London under the protection of his friend, the Countess of Peterborough, in whose houses he stayed from then on. He became a preacher at Lincoln's Inn early in 1647, and despite his royalist loyalties was protected by his friends in Parliament. He watched the execution of Charles I from the roof of the Countess of Peterborough's London house but fainted before the axe fell.