Note 697 — Chapter VII

State Trials, ii. 1449. A few years before this, Abbot had the misfortune, while hunting deer in a nobleman's park, to shoot one of the keepers with his cross-bow. Williams and Laud, who then acted together, with some other of the servile crew, had the baseness to affect scruples at the archbishop's continuance in his function, on pretence that, by some contemptible old canon, he had become irregular in consequence of this accidental homicide; and Spelman disgraced himself by writing a treatise in support of this doctrine. James, however, had more sense than the antiquary, and less ill-nature than the churchmen; and the civilians gave no countenance to Williams's hypocritical scruples. Hacket's Life of Williams, p. 651; Biograph. Britann. art. Abbot; Spelman's Works, part 2, p. 3; Aikin's James I., ii. 259. Williams's real object was to succeed the archbishop on his degradation.

It may be remarked that Abbot, though a very worthy man, had not always been untainted by the air of a court. He had not scrupled grossly to flatter the king: (see his article in Biograph. Brit. and Aikin, i. 368) and tells us himself, that he introduced Villiers, in order to supplant Somerset; which, though well-meant, did not become his function. Even in the delicate business of promising toleration to the catholics by the secret articles of the treaty with Spain, he gave satisfaction to the king (Hardwicke Papers, i. 428), which could only be by compliance. This shows that the letter in Rushworth, ascribed to the archbishop, deprecating all such concessions, is not genuine. In Cabala, p. 13, it is printed with the name of the Archbishop of York, Matthews.