As written for the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, publ. 2004

Transcription

1 Field, Richard ( ), Church of England clergyman, was born on 15 October 1561 at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, the eldest son of John Field. Academically precocious, he was educated at Berkhamsted School and entered Oxford University in 1577, aged sixteen. Anthony Wood claimed that he had entered Magdalen College and remained there until he graduated, after which he moved to Magdalen Hall; but this is probably a mistake, arising from confusion with a namesake from Kent. He certainly was at Magdalen Hall, from where he graduated BA on 18 November 1581 and proceeded MA on 2 June 1584, and was appointed catechism lecturer that year. He drew a large audience from the whole university, among whom one enthusiastic attender was John Rainolds, president of Corpus Christi College. Field was now famous for his prowess in school divinity, and esteemed one of the best disputants in the university. At this time he seems to have refused a marriage arranged by his father on condition that he did not seek ordination, and he remained at Oxford about seven years. In 1591 Field was appointed to the municipally funded lectureship at St Martin Carfax (the city church), where he delivered fortnightly Sunday sermons. After he proceeded BD on 14 June 1592, he was apparently made the Winchester Cathedral divinity reader, though the cathedral archives have no record of this. His place of residence for the next two years is not known, but his renown as an exceptional scholar survived long after his departure from the university, and Field s rooms were shown as an object of interest. On 9 April 1594 Field married Elizabeth (d. 1614), daughter of Richard Harris, rector of Hardwick, Buckinghamshire. In that year he was chosen divinity lecturer at Lincoln s Inn. Impressed with his abilities, the bencher Richard Kingsmill of Highclere, Hampshire, presented him to the living of All Saints, Burghclere, where he was instituted on 12 February He took up residence at the parsonage, built around an old Saxon hall house, and now known as Burghclere Manor. Subsequently offered the more valuable living of St Andrew s, Holborn, he declined it, preferring to remain in the comparative quiet of Burghclere, the better to proceed with his studies. On 7 December 1596 Field proceeded DD from Queen s College. Following a probationary sermon before the queen on 23 September 1598, he was appointed a chaplain-in-ordinary, and subsequently received a grant dated 30 March 1602 of the next vacant prebend at Windsor; he was admitted on 3 August At the Michaelmas chapter that year Field was chosen reader of the divinity lecture for the year following. At Windsor he held the roles of treasurer (1606), precentor (1607), and steward and receiver-general (1611, 1615). Field attended the Hampton Court conference on 14 January 1604, but probably spoke only once. However, in other contexts King James took singular pleasure in discussing with him fine points of divinity. He often preached before the king, who on the first occasion that he heard him exclaimed Is his name Field? This is a field for God to dwell in (Wood, Ath. Oxon.). His A Learned Sermon Preached before the King at Whitehall (1604) took as its text Jude 3; this verse of scripture, appealing for loyalty to the faith once delivered to the saints, undergirded Field s entire thinking on what constitutes a true church. When King James came to Oxford in 1605, Field was sent for to take part in the Divinity Act. The disputation between Field and John Aglionby before the king, on the question whether saints and angels know the hearts of men, was, it was said, one of the best ever heard. Richard Field biography 1 Vernon G. Wilkins 2002

2 Field s principal work, Of the Church, Five Bookes, was first published in London in 1606, printed by Humfrey Lownes and dedicated to the archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft. In fact this volume contained only the first four books. Another impression, with many errata corrected, was printed by Nicholas Okes, probably in 1614, but still dated 1606 on the title-page, and with the printer s name omitted. The Fifth Booke of the Church, together with an Appendix Containing a Defense, printed by Okes, appeared in Of the Church has been described as standing by the side of Hooker, among the grandest monuments of polemical divinity in the language (DNB). Written (in contrast to Richard Hooker s work) in eminently readable English, it is a substantial defence of the authenticity of the Church of England as a true church, against the claims of contemporary Romanism (particularly of its late sixteenth-century spokesmen Bellarmine and Stapleton) that it was no church at all. The reformed, protestant Church of England after the Elizabethan settlement was, Field argued at length, the true Catholic continuation within England of the historic Latin Church; for it was the Church of England and not the late medieval Church of Rome which had adhered to the Catholic verity (Of the Church, bk 3, chap. 39). While this was a common feature of the writings of Anglican divines of his era, Field was perhaps unique in arguing that none of those erroneous positions which at this day they of the Romish faction do defend and we impugn, were ever constantly received in the days of our Fathers, as the doctrine of that Church (ibid. bk 3, appendix). These erroneous beliefs and corrupt practices were only the private fancies and conceipts of particular men, namely the latter-day popes and their followers and spokesmen, who were, according to Field, only a relatively small schismatical and heretical faction within the historic Church of Rome, albeit latterly the prevailing faction (ibid. bk 3, chap. 8). In its fundamental sense the Church of Rome had always been, substantively, a true protestant church. This masterstroke of his tightly reasoned argument needless to say aroused the objections of several contemporary Romanists, despite Field s earlier claim that he would write as they shall have no great mind to answer me. His appendix to the whole work, published with the fifth book in 1610, responded to a number of these, including Theophilus Higgons, a London lecturer and formerly at Christ Church, Oxford, who had transferred his allegiance to Rome about 1607 or Field accepted as a true church every other world church, towards whom his writings have a thoroughly eirenical tone, including the Eastern Church; but towards the Church of Rome he rose to heights of implacable polemicism, and sometimes disdain. In 1609 the king had made Field dean of Gloucester. He never resided there, and only preached a few times a year, but always, as at Windsor, commanded a great audience. There is some evidence that in the aftermath of the publication of The Fifth Booke James s enthusiasm for Field cooled markedly. The arch-priest George Birkhead wrote to his representative in Rome on 23 April 1610 that, when the king read the book, shown to him by James Montagu, bishop of Bath and Wells, he shewed great dislike and Contempt of the proofes of its arguments and did not like that men should handle matter rather with cunning than good learninge, finally throwing it on the ground in a great angre (Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, ed. M. C. Questier, CS, 5th ser., 12, 1998, 79). However, Birkhead was not a disinterested observer, and whatever the king s immediate reaction to the book, manifestations of his favour to Field resumed. Thomas Fuller noted that James had nominated Field as one of the original fellows of the intended Chelsea College. The king had also intended to send him to Germany to settle the differences between the Lutherans and Calvinists (but for some unknown reason this never Richard Field biography 2 Vernon G. Wilkins 2002

3 happened), and he had also wished to bestow on him the bishopric of Salisbury (though Robert Abbot was eventually preferred in 1615), the deanery of Worcester, and the see of Oxford, which latter proposal might have reached fruition were it not for Field s untimely demise. According to his son Nathaniel s life of his father, and to subsequent biographies which draw on it, Field was known as a faithful pastor and for his personable character, humility, kindness, peaceable disposition, and amiable qualities; for his learned conversation and wise judgement, his profound scholarship and fine preaching; and for his astonishing memory, particularly for everything he read. His health apparently suffered, though, from the demands of his studies, business, and frequent travelling. He chiefly resided at Burghclere and, during the winter months, Windsor, and when in residence in the cloisters there his house was the resort of many eminent men, who came to enjoy his learned conversation (DNB). Among his many friends were, it is said, Giles Thomson, dean of Windsor, John Spencer, Richard Hooker, Sir Henry Savile, provost of Eton, and Sir Henry Nevill, who had been Queen Elizabeth s ambassador to France and lived nearby. Field was also celebrated as a loving husband and father. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had at least eight children: John, Benjamin (bap. 1598, d. 1598), Nathaniel (bap. 1600, d. 1666), Richard (bap. 1602, d. 1638), Judith (bap. 1606), Giles (1607/8-1629), Josias (bap. 1611, d. in or after 1638), and Anthony (bap. 1612, d. in or after 1638). The Burghclere registers, which are complete for Field s period and remarkably well preserved, provide a conundrum concerning his first-born son, John. The act of administration of Field s estate was granted in December 1616 to John Field, natural and legitimate son of Richard Field, and also, since John was a minor, to Field s brother-in-law Nathaniel Harris LLD; it is possible that this was the John Field, dris. fil., ( son of a doctor ) who graduated BA from Trinity College, Oxford, in 1614, although according to the Burghclere baptism register Field s son was baptized on 7 October 1597, and thus would have been only sixteen at that time. Intriguingly, however, the Burghclere burial register records the burial of John Feild, son of Mr Doctor Feilde on the same day as his baptism. On 14 October 1614 Field s wife died aged forty-one. After about two years he married Dorothy, widow of John Spencer (1558/9-1614), sometime president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; she was Izaak Walton s aunt and the daughter of Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop s nephew. Field, however, survived his second marriage little more than a month. After a seizure on 15 November, he died on 21 November. He was buried with his first wife in the nave of St George s Chapel, Windsor. A black marble slab with brass inscription was laid over his grave, but was later removed, probably at the 1789 repaving of the chapel. On hearing of his death, King James expressed his regret in the words, I should have done more for that man (Wood, Ath. Oxon.). Later in the century Thomas Fuller, punning on his name as the king had done decades earlier, styled him in his Holy War (bk 4, chap. 5) that learned divine, whose memory smelleth like a field which the Lord hath blessed (after Genesis 27:27). Field s son Nathaniel, who graduated BA from New College, Oxford, in 1621 and proceeded MA in 1625, championed his father s work and in 1628 published a second edition of Of the Church, dedicated to George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. The third book is substantially enlarged in two chapters, and the previously minimal appendix to the third book is completely rewritten, though at the time of Field s death only half the sections were completed, and even these retained, uncharacteristically, many untranslated Latin Richard Field biography 3 Vernon G. Wilkins 2002

4 quotations. This edition is charged by Robert Baillie in his Canterburian s Self-Conviction (1641) with having been added to by Archbishop Laud. Further complete and partial editions appeared subsequently. Nathaniel became rector of Stourton, Wiltshire, in 1632 and a canon of Chichester the following year. At the time of his death Field had written a great part of a new work to be entitled A view of the controversies in religion, which in these last times have caused the lamentable divisions in the Christian world. This was never completed, and is lost except for the preface and a few notes on predestination, which are printed in Nathaniel s admiring biography of his father, Some Short Memorials Concerning the Life of that Reverend Divine Doctor Richard Field (1716). Vernon G. Wilkins Richard Field biography 4 Vernon G. Wilkins 2002

5 SOURCES: N. Field, Some short memorials concerning the life of that reverend divine Doctor Richard Field, ed. J. LeNève ( ) Wood, Ath. Oxon., 2nd edn, Foster DNB Biographical notice, R. Field, Of the church, five books, Ecclesiastical History Society (1847), 1.iii A. Chalmers, ed., Biographical dictionary ( ), STC, Burghclere registers, Hampshire County RO, Winchester PRO, PROB 6/9. fol. 97r, SP14, C66/1801 St George s Chapel archives, Windsor, XV.42.27, XV.42.32, XV.56.57, XV Winchester Cathedral Library and archives, alphabetical index of Hants. clerics (beneficed); chapter book, ; calendar of cathedral papers, ; Baigent papers; composition book T. Fuller, History of the holy war (1840), bk 4, chap. 5 J. N. Dalton, The manuscripts of St George s chapel (1957) S. Bond, The chapter acts of Windsor, (1966) S. Bond, The monuments of St George s chapel, Windsor (1958); repr. (1999) Oxford University Press 2003 REFERENCES: Field, Richard ( ), Church of England clergyman Sources N. Field, Some short memorials concerning the life of that reverend divine Doctor Richard Field, ed. J. LeNève ( ) Wood, Ath. Oxon., 2nd edn, Foster DNB Biographical notice, R. Field, Of the church, five books, Ecclesiastical History Society (1847), 1.iii A. Chalmers, ed., Biographical dictionary ( ), STC, Burghclere registers, Hampshire County RO, Winchester PRO, PROB 6/9. fol. 97r, SP14, C66/1801 St George s Chapel archives, Windsor, XV.42.27, XV.42.32, XV.56.57, XV Winchester Cathedral Library and archives, alphabetical index of Hants. clerics (beneficed); chapter book, ; calendar of cathedral papers, ; Baigent papers; composition book T. Fuller, History of the holy war (1840), bk 4, chap. 5 J. N. Dalton, The manuscripts of St George s chapel (1957) S. Bond, The chapter acts of Windsor, (1966) S. Bond, The monuments of St George s chapel, Windsor (1958); repr. (1999) Richard Field biography 5 Vernon G. Wilkins 2002