John Cosin, adopted by the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement as one of its most significant influences, was born into a well-established gentry family of Norfolk and married into one of the most ancient houses of county Durham. An autocratic and uncompromisingly regal quasi-prince-bishop of the Durham palatinate (which included the role of lord lieutenant), Cosin successfully suppressed efforts from the local gentry to obtain parliamentary representation in the Commons.
Throughout Cosin’s career in the episcopate there was a tension between the demands of his regional and his parliamentary duties; he resolved this problem by constant communication with Stapylton.
Wealth
Cosin, as a court pensioner under Charles I, had been reasonably prosperous but he was reduced to penury after the death of the king. By 1644 he had left England for France, where he became dependent on charity from his fellow exiles and from the clergy at home (including his own chaplain, William Sancroft), while his daughters subsisted on a small pension from the Protectorate.
Cosin spent in excess of £34,000 on public works and refurbishments during the first eight years of his episcopate.
Early career, to 1660
A veteran of the Caroline higher clergy, Cosin was an active member, with William Laud†, of the Durham House Group of anti-Calvinists and polemicists, an Arminian theological grouping that clustered around Richard Neile in the 1620s and 1630s. As a historian of the liturgy, eucharist and canon of scripture he prepared devotional manuals for the Caroline court to counter accusations that Protestant courtiers were less well served than their Catholic counterparts. He continued to produce such works in exile.
The calling of a new Parliament in 1640 provided a forum for complaints against Cosin. He became a victim of puritan satire, lost his ecclesiastical and academic positions and joined the court in exile as chaplain in 1644.
Edward Hyde had planned to make Cosin bishop of Peterborough, although he was uneasy about Cosin’s speedy resumption of the use of the still-proscribed Anglican liturgy.
Bishop of Durham
Cosin embarked on an energetic episcopate, as much secular as it was spiritual. On 2 July 1660, three months before his nomination as bishop, he had already welcomed the royal commission to preserve the mines and coal pits of the see of Durham but was disappointed that it did not extend to the management of woods and game.
Cosin also resented attempts to give parliamentary representation to Durham city and county, arguing that it was unnecessary because incoming bishops of Durham swore an oath to protect the palatine authority’s rights, privileges and immunities.
Elections to the Cavalier Parliament in the spring of 1661 revealed Cosin’s influence in those boroughs which were permitted to vote. As lord of the manor of Northallerton he put up his son-in-law, Gerard, who was returned with a local cavalier, Roger Talbot‡. Gerard became one of Cosin’s men of business in the Commons, supporting the bishop’s religious policies and commercial interests.
Cosin’s liturgical skills, born of a lifelong interest in correcting the Book of Common Prayer, led him, in March 1661, to begin revision of the prayer book, both at the Savoy conference and in convocation. Richard Baxter acknowledged Cosin’s learning and found him ‘more affable and familiar than the rest’ but insisted that he talked ‘with so little logic, natural or artificial, that I perceived no one much moved by anything he said’.
Cosin went north to his bishopric in August 1661.
Prayer book revisions and the Uniformity Bill, 1661–2
Cosin’s parliamentary career was circumscribed by ill health and the difficulties of travel from the far north of England but, once installed in his Pall Mall lodgings, he took a full role in the business of the House, reporting from committees, speaking in debate and helping to manage conferences with the Commons. He was a regular member of the Journal committee, examining the Journal on eight occasions. Of the nine sessions during his episcopate, he attended seven, four of those for more than two-thirds of all sittings. There are no available division lists for votes in which he participated but his voting intentions on numerous matters are clear from his correspondence. In his first session, Cosin was named to 60 select committees and to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions. On 20 Mar. 1662 he reported to the House on private legislation for Sir Thomas Lee‡. On 29 Apr. he also reported back from the committee on the Wye and Lugg navigation (having chaired the latter the same day).
The prayer book revisions were finally complete by December 1661. Cosin was one of the bishops who, together with Sheldon attended the Privy Council where the liturgy was approved and sent to the House of Lords.
On 10 Mar. 1662 Cosin reported back to the House from the select committee on the bill on the religious settlement (‘to confirm three acts’). As a supporter of a narrow Anglican uniformity he antagonized Presbyterians still more by his ‘speaking and carriage in this business’.
Cosin nevertheless insisted that such powers could be wielded only by an archbishop.
On 8 May 1662 Cosin acquainted the House that he, George Griffith, of St Asaph, and Richard Sterne, of Carlisle, had authority from convocation to amend a scribal error in the new version of the Book of Common Prayer and did so at the clerk’s table. On 17 May the special privileges of the palatine were again raised when the conference on the northern borders bill was reported by Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby. The bill enabled the justices of the peace for Northumberland and Cumberland to impose a tax or rate in order to fund local units to protect the inhabitants against marauding ‘moss troopers’. The Lords bowed to the Commons’ refusal to agree to their proviso to extend the bill to the county palatine and Newcastle.
Diocesan affairs, 1662–4
Cosin attended for the prorogation on 19 May 1662, then returned to his bishopric and maintained that he was ‘hugely busy’. He nevertheless planned to be at Doncaster by the end of May, unless delayed by William Cavendish, marquess of Newcastle, and intended to be in Northumberland by July.
Not surprisingly, Cosin’s detailed scrutiny of every detail of secular and pastoral life took its toll on his health and by December 1662 he was complaining of dizzy spells while negotiating with George Morley, bishop of Winchester, over a vacancy on the Durham chapter.
With rumours of sedition rife throughout the spring of 1663, Cosin reissued instructions to his deputy lieutenants.
Thus occupied with local difficulties, Cosin did not return to Westminster until 29 Apr. 1663; he attended the session for 55 per cent of all sittings and was named to 23 select committees. On 29 June he chaired the select committee on Witney Free School, reporting back to the House on 1 July.
By May 1663 Cosin had turned his back on his straightened circumstances in exile and settled into his role as a prince-bishop; the diarist John Evelyn recorded that he had supported Cosin during his exile but was ‘little remembered’ by the bishop ‘in his greatness’.
After visiting Cambridge in early July, Cosin returned to London and attended the session until four days before the prorogation of 27 July 1663.
Tensions at home and abroad, 1664–5
Although reluctant to leave his diocese, Cosin obeyed Sheldon and was at Westminster for the start of business on 16 Mar. 1664.
Growing tensions with the Dutch prompted plans for a rendezvous of militia and volunteers in Durham on 26 July 1664 but it was aborted in response to rumours of a rising planned for 25 July. Blakiston feared that former parliamentarians outnumbered royalists and advised Cosin to conduct a survey of every parish. The bishop duly instructed secret investigations into any parishioners who might have served in parliamentary forces under Oliver Cromwell‡ and a report on their current political principles.
By October 1664 Cosin had become concerned about the extent of naval jurisdiction in Durham granted to Charles Howard, earl of Carlisle (lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland). The bishop was questioned by Ralph Delaval‡, deputy lieutenant of Northumberland, who feared that the palatine could prove a haven for seamen hoping to escape the press. Jealous of his jurisdiction, Cosin secured his own commission to impress seamen throughout the palatinate.
Back in the Lords for the start of the new session on 24 Nov. 1664, Cosin attended for 76 per cent of all sittings and was named to 14 select committees. Despite being at Parliament, he continued to keep an eye on northern affairs. By the spring of 1665, Cosin had learned of plans to cut a 40-foot-wide drainage channel which would affect his land. Marmaduke Langdale, 2nd Baron Langdale, intended to obtain a parliamentary act to complete the work, which it was suggested would ‘prove to the disadvantage of my lord [Cosin] and his tenants’. No such bill appears to have been introduced into either House, suggesting the distinct possibility that Cosin had succeeded in blocking it.
Cosin attended the House until the prorogation on 2 Mar. 1665, after which he was again able to give his full attention to his own affairs. On 1 May he again tried to secure relief from payment of the queen’s pension.
At the start of the Anglo-Dutch war in May 1665, Cosin’s competence and integrity once again came under scrutiny from Carleton, who informed Secretary Sir Joseph Williamson‡ in July that not only were nonconformists meeting in numbers but also that Cosin had illegally helped himself to the forfeited estate of Sir Henry Vane‡. He added that any contesting of the estate should be carried out in London, since Cosin ‘nominates sheriffs and coroner, they are his creatures, and the adverse party fear a packed jury … if the case were in London, the witnesses would neither be overawed nor tampered with’.
Cosin conducted a visitation over the summer but his primary concerns were political rather than ecclesiastical, especially once he had been warned by Fauconberg of yet another plot, this time a rumoured uprising of Quakers.
Disputes over the Vane estates and with Denis Granville
On 6 Nov. 1665, Cosin was again attacked by Carleton, who repeated the charge that Cosin had appropriated Vane’s estates in Barnard Castle and Raby, that he had sued the tenants for arrears of rent and that he had, on learning that the estates were to be seized for the duke of York, stationed soldiers in Raby Castle after removing all livestock and household goods. Furthermore, according to Carleton, Cosin had forbidden the tenants to attend the court kept by the royal receiver and had refused to empanel a jury to sit on the king’s commission to investigate Vane’s estates, ‘giving to the disaffected party the bad example of contempt of authority’. Cosin was also accused of a ‘usurpation of his majesty’s rights’ in the exercise of his episcopal and palatine authority.
In February, Cosin’s flouting of royal authority in the matter of the Vane estates was again criticized, this time by John Bainbridge, one of the king’s commissioners, who corroborated Carleton’s accusations that Cosin ‘pretends royal rights in the bishopric, has seized all the rents and arrears, and refused to return a jury, in contempt of the writ’. The commission would have failed but for the intervention of the duke of York. Bainbridge forwarded to London depositions which revealed that Cosin had received £1,200 in arrears of rents due to the king since Vane’s death.
It was a family matter that finally earned Cosin the rebuke of the king and involved the bishop in greater political scrutiny. By April 1666 he was in dispute with his clerical son-in-law and archdeacon of Durham, Denis Granville, over the latter’s extravagance and his treatment of Cosin’s daughter Anne. Cosin was warned by John Granville, earl of Bath (Denis’ brother and an intimate friend of the king), that the marriage might have wrecked Denis Granville’s career owing to the king’s dislike of married clergy. Bath’s kinsman and close associate, George Monck, duke of Albemarle, weighed in to support Denis Granville’s demand for his wife’s unpaid portion. Albemarle claimed that Granville had come ‘to great misfortune’ through his marriage to an unstable woman.
we are … fully satisfied that he [Denis Granville] deserves that good report which is generally given of him, notwithstanding all that hath been said to the contrary to some of our public ministers of state … cannot but recommend him in most effectual manner unto you, as a person not only well deserving in himself, but relating to a family whose favour you would not do well to condemn, that have done and suffered so much for our royal father as well as ourself, assuring you that in bestowing a fortune on him suitable to his present unhappiness, and helping him out of his distractions occasioned by his debts (which may now prove very injurious to your daughter …) you will not only do yourself a great kindness, but a most grateful and acceptable thing to us, and divers considerable persons who heartily solicit on his behalf … expecting your compliance herein, and an account of the same, (which for your own sake as well as his we shall be very sorry you should fail of) …
Remains of Denis Granville, 6-7.
It is likely that Cosin complied with the command but his hatred for his son-in-law endured for years thereafter, not least when his daughter was treated with mercury as a supposed cure for her ‘distemper’.
Cosin complained of illness and weakness but pressed on with the recovery of what he saw as his financial rights. He sent an account of his dispute with Pembroke to Clarendon and Sheldon, and on 24 June 1666 he informed his chancellor, Sir Francis Goodricke‡, that he wanted to proceed speedily at common law to preserve the privileges of the see and uphold the act of Parliament that gave him those rights. Sheldon responded that he had spoken with Pembroke’s solicitor but thought Cosin ‘would do little good’ with his persistence.
On 19 Mar. 1666 Cosin refused to travel to Parliament on grounds of ill health. On 27 Aug. he again informed Sheldon that he would not be able to attend the House without risk to his life. He undertook to attend Parliament in the spring but meanwhile maintained that he could best serve king and country by fulfilling his role as lord lieutenant.
The lead mines bills, 1666–7
Cosin did not attend the session that opened in September 1666, registering his proxy to Henchman instead. Despite being a conscientious parliamentarian when at Westminster, he undoubtedly preferred to remain in Durham and was probably confident that with his son-in-law Gerard and his chancellor, Goodricke, in the Commons, his personal parliamentary interests would be well looked after. Any confidence that he felt was soon tested. During November Gerard was appointed to the Commons select committee considering a bill to empower Cosin to lease certain flooded lead mines to Humphrey Wharton‡. Wharton was Cosin’s moormaster, with responsibility for licensing lead mines, and the payment of a royalty on lead ore (‘the bishop’s lot’) meant that Cosin had a commercial incentive to secure the bill. It passed the Commons on 3 Dec. 1666, steered through by Goodricke. The committee that then considered it in the Lords included Humphrey Wharton’s kinsman Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, and was chaired by Cosin’s metropolitan, Sterne.
All was not, however, well. In accordance with established procedure the committee sought the opinion of the dean and chapter, whose interests were also affected by the bill. Cosin deeply resented this. Unwilling to countenance any challenge to his authority, he insisted that, having received his own assent to the bill, the select committee needed to make no further investigation; such a precedent would encourage the chapter ‘to challenge a superintendency over the bishop, and give an ill example to all the deans and chapters in England to take part with any one of their own body against their bishop and his tenants’. The reality was that he and Wharton were both in dispute with the Durham chapter over the lease. By January 1667 Cosin had lobbied his fellow bishops and Anthony Ashley Cooper, then Baron Ashley, later earl of Shaftesbury, in favour of the bill. Cosin advised his moormaster to comply as far as possible with the chapter’s demands, so that the lead mines bill would pass that session, ‘for if it be stopped or rejected now, how you will bring it on again hereafter, and satisfy all opposition that may arise against it, I do not know’. Isaac Basire, who opposed the bill, learned details of the committee discussions from Edward Rainbowe, of Carlisle, who made it clear that opposition to the bill came mainly from the bishops (who were concerned about long-term damage to Church interests) but that they had been outnumbered by the lords temporal, who were prepared to negotiate with Wharton. Sheldon had then arrived and threatened to oppose the bill in its entirety.
In July 1667 Cosin travelled south to attend the House, only to discover that Parliament was to be prorogued. He almost certainly remained in London since he was present for the first day of the new session on 10 Oct. 1667. He attended 82 per cent of all sittings and was named to 19 select committees. On 12 Oct., when proposals for toleration were being floated, he wrote to Sheldon, encouraging him to have a copy of the Commons’ address to the king on religious indulgence included as an appendix to the pamphlets that the archbishop had caused to be published.
Meanwhile Cosin was also pursuing personal and regional issues. On 11 Nov. 1667 a new bill to enable him to lease lead mines was brought up from the Commons, where Sir Gilbert Gerard had again assisted its passage.
Cosin and his dean and chapter were also at odds over the payment of subsidies. In December 1667 Sudbury approached Sancroft, hoping that he would present their case against the payment of subsidies to Ashley (in his capacity as chancellor of the exchequer). Not unreasonably, Cosin’s insistence that they were liable was seen as a petty act of revenge, there being no precedent for charging a cathedral chapter with subsidies.
Parliamentary representation for Durham
The question of parliamentary representation for Durham was another issue that concerned the bishop. In February 1668 he wrote that he had heard ‘that there is a great deal of plotting among some men in this country … against me and the rights of the county palatine which I labour to defend’. There was to be a new petition for parliamentary elections ‘and to annex a complaint thereunto that the bishop by his officers keep much of the country money in his own hands, and have not duly paid it in … the rumour runs here too fast and some men are apt enough to give it credit or credulity’.
stand upon the nomination of one burgess and one knight which they promised should be reserved unto me and my successors and which they are not able to make sure and good but by a clause inserted for that purpose in the act of Parliament, and about this we are now disputing as likewise about the votes of the leasehold and copyholders and customary tenants to have right in the election of one knight and one burgess … but it may cost the country dear to maintain their agents … and to pay all other costs of drawing and passing this bill before the business be ended, but Mr Morland [George Morland‡] and some others have too good a faculty to drain their purses …
Cosin letter bk. 5a, f. 20.
Morland, the son-in-law of Cuthbert Carr, another agitator for parliamentary representation, joined John Tempest, the deputy lieutenant, in Cosin’s black books. Tempest was dismissed from his local offices for supporting the scheme.
On 13 Dec. 1667 the bill for electing two Members for the county of Durham and two for the cathedral city was given its first reading in the Commons.
Despite the bishop’s objections the bill was popular locally. In May 1668 Cosin was disturbed by reports of triumphant celebrations in Durham for the bill’s proponents and by suggestions that at his return his own welcome would be insignificant. He was so upset by the implicit insult that he wondered if there should be a prosecution ‘for the affront thereby done to the king and the bishop as should make them sensible of their presumption herein who can give no just account of such a number meeting together in a troop without orders’.
Continuing diocesan unrest
Cosin returned to Durham to conduct his visitation; in early June 1668 he was at Newcastle and Tynemouth and, with Basire, consecrated a new church on ground donated by Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland.
In mid-September 1668 it was said that Cosin was not ‘in so great favour and power’ as ‘all good men’ might wish. The court preferred the likes of John Wilkins, bishop of Chester, who told Cosin that political and religious moderation would secure English protestantism more effectively than the latter’s authoritarian tactics.
Carleton continued to undermine Cosin by sending alarmist messages to central government about nonconformity in the region. His perception of the strength of the nonconformist threat was diametrically opposed to Cosin’s: the conventicle that Cosin had reported as having 500 attendees, Carleton declared to be 3,000 strong, including the wife of the mayor of Newcastle. The scale of their differences meant that the bishop felt under constant pressure to demonstrate his competence.
Final years in Parliament, 1669–71
The shift in power at court to Arlington and George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, made Cosin uneasy. In January 1669 he complained to Stapylton that ‘there is a watch over me as there is over other bishops what we do herein contrary to the king’s command … that no lease of 21 years be turned into three lives’. He was also concerned that one of his tenants was procuring the assistance of Buckingham and Arlington for his own benefit against Cosin’s interests. He feared that this would ‘open a gap to all others to rush in after him and continually to disquiet me, till all my tenants that are considerable make themselves masters over me’.
Cosin attended the House on 1 Mar. 1669 for the prorogation and then returned to the north-east, where he recovered better health. By June he was commuting between Auckland Castle and Durham and, with news of a new parliamentary session anticipated as early as October, expected to return to London. The death of the queen mother in September 1669 gave him a renewed incentive to apply for an abatement of the annual pension; by the following summer, he had still failed, despite presenting himself in person at the treasury.
Six days before the start of the new session, Cosin received the proxy of William Lucy (vacated at the end of the session). He attended the House on 19 Oct. 1669 for the start of business, was present for 67 per cent of all sittings and was named to four select committees and to all three of the sessional committees. For Cosin the main issue of the session was the revival of attempts to enfranchise Durham. By 23 Oct. he had instructed Stapylton to organize the sympathetic gentry ‘to be ready in all such matters as may contribute to quash any such efforts for knights and burgesses’. During the winter months, with his chaplain William Flower in constant communication with Stapylton, Cosin was confident that a meeting at Chester-le-Street about a new attempt to obtain parliamentary representation would misfire. Proponents of reform appear to have counted on the support of Charles Powlett, then styled Lord St John of Basing, (later 6th marquess of Winchester and duke of Bolton), who had acquired interests in the north-east through his second marriage. Cosin, with earlier differences with Bath presumably mended, was however confident that St John would ‘neither afford them his furtherance in their restless design … nor oppose my lord the earl of Bath between whom and him there is a great dearness of friendship’.
In November 1669 Cosin expressed dismay over the continuing factional struggles associated with Skinner’s Case.
I like not Mr Morland’s answer which he gave you, for it hath some mischief in the belly of it, besides some untruth that there is in it; for when first … the foreman of the Grand Jury brought in the petition about k[night]s and b[urgesse]s and about a contribution made for the promoting that design, Mr Morland protested to myself, who questioned him about it, that he had no hand in it at all, and would never meddle with it, which you may tell him again from me. Nor do I like Mr Bristow’s answer, who it seems would meddle in the matter and not be seen in it; else why did he go to the meeting …
Cosin Corresp. ii. 215–16, 218, 227.
As the 1670–1 parliamentary session approached, Cosin was confident that the king would stick ‘unto his own party in the Parliament which I make no question will very faithfully and amply serve him in the defence of his kingdom and the Church’.
I have no desire to get any thing either by their forfeitures or the forfeitures of others upon this score, and therefore I wished my friends in the House of Commons to let the Act stand as it was penned, that the forfeitures should be recovered in any of the king’s courts at Westminster, whereunto if I had added the courts established within the county Palatine of Durham, as they in the Marches of Wales and elsewhere did not, it would have been interpreted to be a greediness and a desire of gain in me, and besides it would have been an envious thing from the justices and other officers or delinquents in our country that I should take their forfeitures to myself, against which you know I have often made profession, and so I pray tell them all …
Cosin Corresp. ii. 238.
Cosin’s reluctance should not be construed as a willingness to give up the proposed forfeitures altogether. Later in the summer, he expected Stapylton to co-ordinate efforts among the bishop’s supporters ‘to preserve them to me against the faction that are ready to take them away’.
In March 1670 the divorce bill of John Manners, Lord Roos, the future 9th earl and duke of Rutland, came before the House. Even before the debate began, it was known that Cosin would defy the majority of the bishops and support the bill.
On 28 Mar. Cosin registered his proxy in favour of Wilkins (thus also vacating the proxy he held from Lucy), presumably anticipating that it would be used in favour of the bill. Proxies had been used at the first and second readings and it seems likely therefore that they were also used at the third reading, though there is no evidence to confirm this. While still absent from the House, Cosin re-registered his proxy in favour of Seth Ward, of Salisbury, on 4 Apr., presumably for use in any potential vote on the conventicles bill. Ward, unlike Wilkins, could be trusted to oppose it. The proxy was vacated with Cosin’s attendance five days later. Once the bill had passed he sent a copy to Stapylton, instructing him to co-ordinate its implementation. Later that summer Stapylton, despairing ‘ever either to write or doe any thing that shall be pleasing or acceptable’ to the bishop, tendered his resignation. Cosin insisted that ‘his frequent and kind expressions’ proved the contrary and denied Stapylton’s right to resign.
During May 1670, it was rumoured in York that Cosin had died. He was certainly suffering at that time and was scared of a new attack of strangury, ‘which is so great a torture to be endured that I … do all I can to prevent it’. Now suffering from incontinence, he was advised against travel. Unable to face the journey to Durham, he preferred to remain at his lodgings near to St James’s Park, where he had his papers and books.
Meanwhile, Cosin was becoming increasingly angry with Denis Granville, not only because of his daughter’s unhappiness but also because Granville had absented himself without leave from Durham and, as he later described it, was ‘gadding at Oxford’ on borrowed money. He ordered an action against Granville for debt and for failing to pay his daughter’s trustees. Granville had already consulted five doctors about his wife (‘whom he labours to prove mad’ and subject to ‘maniac passion’) but the London physicians diagnosed her as having ‘fits of the mother’ (i.e. hysterical episodes, possibly accompanied by convulsions). Cosin imputed Granville’s motives to resentment at his obligations to the bishop.
By the end of August 1670 Cosin was anticipating the end of the summer recess. He was named as a commissioner for the union with Scotland but remained pessimistic in the light of objections raised during the reign of James I. Despite his opposition to the proposals, he attended meetings regularly before the commission was adjourned. He had anticipated that its deliberations would move forward very slowly, given the demands of the Scots and the strength of hostility to the plan.
Cosin was excused attendance at a call of the House on 14 Nov. 1670. Conducting his business affairs by mail, he fell into a new dispute with the deputy postmaster, Arlington’s older brother, John Bennet, later Baron Ossulston, about the postage payable on packets (but not letters) during the sitting of Parliament. Cosin insisted that this was a breach of parliamentary privilege. He instructed Stapylton to refuse to pay post-office charges on certain forms of mail since, having spoken to several lords, ‘I shall do the House of Peers much wrong if either I or my officers pay any such tax upon packets whether they contain a leaf of paper concerning rents which ought all to be free as long as I am bound here to attend the Parliament’. During December, at Cosin’s request, Arlington intervened with his brother, confirming that Cosin’s interpretation was correct.
Although he was in London, Cosin attended the House less regularly over the winter, being determined to ‘fence’ himself from the cold.
Furthermore, his difficulties with Granville multiplied as the latter disappeared to the continent, leaving Cosin perplexed about ‘the juggle that … is used between the archdeacon and his agents’ and unaware of his daughter’s whereabouts.
Cosin continued with business from London, supporting an unsuccessful attempt by the king to secure the election of Buckingham as chancellor of Cambridge and pressing Arlington to obtain the king’s approval for his nomination of Sir George Vane as a deputy lieutenant of the county palatine. He also demanded that Stapylton check episcopal rights over shipwrecks on the Easington coast, seeking legal confirmation that they belonged not to the vice-admiral but to the bishop.
Death and legacy
A newsletter of early May reported that Cosin was sick and unlikely to recover. Aware that he would be unable to return to the north-east to conduct his visitation, the bishop sought a formal commission for his diocesan officers to perform it in his place.
There was an interval of three months between Cosin’s death and burial. The funeral was delayed until the roads were passable, as the body, lead and coffin weighed in excess of 500 lbs.
A statement of benefits conferred on the see of Durham by Cosin showed that he had spent over £16,000 on the episcopal residences in the north-east and £3,000 on his public library, and had founded eight scholarships at Cambridge. Embellishments to his own chapel included at least 20 stained glass coats of arms. His signature woodwork, a unique form of ‘gothic’ embellishment, was introduced into all the churches and chapels that he refurbished.
Eight years after his death, at the height of the Exclusion Crisis, Cosin’s years of exile in France became the subject of a Privy Council investigation. A committee of intelligence was ordered to enquire into allegations that he had left a ‘black box’ with papers that proved the king’s marriage to the mother of James Scott, duke of Monmouth. Word circulated that Cosin had left instructions for the box to remain locked until the king’s death but that Sir Gilbert Gerard, opening it anyway, had discovered evidence of the marriage, performed by Cosin while in France. Gerard denied it.