REYNOLDS, Edward (1599-1676)

As the only Presbyterian to accept a bishopric in 1660, Edward Reynolds held a unique place in the Restoration Church. The son of a Southampton customs official whose family came originally from Somerset, Reynolds excelled in Greek at Oxford and became a noted preacher both in the capital and in Northamptonshire. Ath. Ox. iii. 1083; Salmon, Lives, 305. A prolific writer and much cited authority on Reformed Protestantism he was a member of the Westminster Assembly in 1643 and involved in the post-Civil War visitation of Oxford, securing the deanery of Christ Church though he was not long afterwards removed from it and the vice-chancellorship of the university for refusing the engagement to the Commonwealth, despite the efforts of John Crew later Baron Crew, to avert it. Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly ed. C. Van Dixhoorn, ii. 133; Reliquiae Baxterianae, pt. 1, p. 64; Reynolds, Death’s Advantage (1657), ep. ded. Mrs Reynolds, apparently refusing to be moved, had to be carried out of the deanery in her chair. Salmon, Lives, 306.

Reynolds was much in demand as a preacher in London and in Northamptonshire during the later 1650s, delivering sermons to, amongst others, the House of Commons (9 Jan. 1657 and 4 Feb. 1659), the lord mayor and aldermen of London and the East India Company. Evelyn Diary, iii. 202; Reynolds, Whole Works ed. Pitman (1826), v. 25, 49, 72, 134, 184, 206, 229. Reynolds was close to a number of Northamptonshire gentry familes, including those of Lord Crew, Sir James Langham,^{‡ Reynolds, Deaths Advantage (1657), ep. ded.; Reynolds, The Churches Triumph over Death (1662), ep. ded.} and the devout Sir Henry Yelverton,^‡ to whose family Reynolds considered himself a friend. Reynolds, A Sermon touching the use of human learning (1658), ep. ded. Anthony Wood complained that he ‘flattered Oliver [Cromwell^‡] and his gang’, and glimpsed a window of opportunity in 1660 by courting George Monck, the future duke of Abermarle to regain his own position at Oxford. Ath. Ox. iii. 1084. The return of the Long Parliament placed Reynolds in a position of greater influence. Baxter wrote that Edmund Calamy, the leading London Presbyterian, and a man close to Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, recruited Reynolds (because his ‘learning and reputation would be of use’) and Simeon Ash, Manchester’s chaplain, to help to promote Presbyterianism. These three, he wrote, were ‘the leading men that kept correspondence with the Lords, and had most interest ... at court, as having been most serviceable to them’. Reliquiae Baxterianae, pt. 2, 229-31, 265. The Commons restored him to his deanery of Christ Church on 13 Mar., removing John Owen who had replaced him in 1651.

Reynolds seems to have been more willing than some of his friends to accept the bona fides of the returning king. On 13 Apr. George Morley, later bishop of Worcester and Winchester informed Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, that Reynolds, unlike Calamy, was satisfied with the king’s assurances of a free synod to discuss the liturgy and church government. CCSP, iv. 654. On 25 Apr. 1660 Reynolds preached before the Commons, advocating ‘healing’ in the Church and promoting the Ussher proposals on reduced episcopacy. Pepys Diary, i. 116; Reynolds, The Author and Subject of Healing in the Church (1660); Reynolds, Divine Efficacy without human power (1660). Both Heneage Finch, later earl of Nottingham, and John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt, were pleased with it, Mordaunt judging it ‘excellent, proper and honest’. HMC 5th Rep. 206; CCSP, iv. 675. Five days later, Reynolds returned to the theme of ‘healing’ in a sermon before the peers at Westminster Abbey. Reynolds, The Means and Method of Healing in the Church (1660). Mordaunt reported to the king on 9 May that he had ‘prevailed with’ Reynolds and Calamy as to episcopacy and the liturgy. CCCP, v. 25. A few days later they were part of a delegation of Presbyterian divines who accompanied commissioners from Parliament and the City on a mission to the king. Bosher, Restoration Settlement, 127-9. Now the royalists’ favourite Presbyterians, Reynolds and Calamy were appointed royal chaplains on the day the king arrived in England, when negotiations began in earnest over the shape of Church government. Involved in the obscure discussions on the subject taking place in June, Reynolds would preach again before the Commons on the 28th, a day after the first reading of a bill for maintenance of the Protestant religion. Forced to make way at Christ Church for George Morley, he was provided with the wardenship of Merton instead in September, but greater preferment was being prepared for him. CSP Dom. 1660-1, 262. One of the Presbyterian team appointed to negotiate in October with episcopal divines over the interim statement of ecclesiastical policy that eventually became the Worcester House Declaration, Reynolds had already been approached by Hyde, via Colonel John Birch^‡ in September, about accepting a bishopric, and his acceptance was public by the end of the month. Eg. 2542, ff. 265-70; Reliquiae Baxterianae, pt. 2, 230, 265, 278, 281, 364; Green, Re-establishment of the Church of England, 84 and n. According to Baxter, Reynolds accepted on the basis of a ‘profession’ concerning the status of the bishop and his intention to govern with the consent and assistance of the presbyters, a statement in line with the final form of the Declaration. Ath. Ox. iii. 1084; Reliquiae Baxterianae, pt. 2, 283. Reynolds and Calamy, according to Baxter, attempted to moderate Baxter’s responses to the drafts of the Declaration. Reliquiae Baxterianae, pt. 2, 283.

In January 1661, Reynolds was consecrated along with Nicholas Monck, bishop of Hereford, Gilbert Ironside, bishop of Bristol, and William Nicholson, bishop of Gloucester. Evelyn Diary, iii. 266. When, two months later, he was listed in the royal warrant for the Savoy Conference with the bishops, the arrangements for substitutes in the warrant made it plain that he was to be considered as on the Presbyterian side. Cardwell, 257, 266, 299. In July 1661, around the inconclusive end of the conference, he left London for his diocese. Add. 22579, f. 23v; Sir T. Browne, Works, vi. 16. As bishop of Norwich, Reynolds also became abbot of St Bennet, the only remaining abbot in England, ‘a strange preferment’ for a Presbyterian, Anthony Wood chortled. Norf. RO, ms 453; Ath. Ox. iii. 1084. He rebuilt the bishop’s palace and built a new chapel at his own expense. Rait, Episcopal Palaces, 246. By October 1670, he had received £7,000 in fines for renewed leases, and spent some £12,000, including more than £3,000 on repairs to diocesan property and some £5,000 on abatements of fines and augmentations. Bodl: Tanner 137, f. 34. The king confirmed Reynolds’ right to double the rents when renewing certain leases, but required Reynolds to forfeit the additional revenue to benefit a gentleman of the privy chamber (George Walsh^‡, a former royalist soldier) who had remained loyal to the crown throughout. CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 116, 386; CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 134; HP Commons 1660-90, iii. 665.

He began his episcopate with every intention of exercising episcopal authority as if he were a chief presbyter rather than an Anglican prelate. He appended to a sermon he gave at an ordination ceremony on 22 Sept. that he planned to follow ‘the example of the ancient bishops in the primitive and purer ages of the Church, who were wont to sit with their clergy, and preside in an ecclesiastical senate’, entreating their advice and assistance as ‘in matters of weight and difficulty’. Reynolds, The Preaching of Christ (1662), ep. ded. He allowed ordinands to make their subscriptions with reference to the Worcester House Declaration, although while he undertook a large number of ordinations in his first year, most of them were local men, and there was little sign of Presbyterians travelling to seek ordination at his hands. The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited ed. S. Taylor and G. Tapsell, 217, 219-20. He appointed as his diocesan chancellor John Mylles^‡, a Presbyterian and client of Abermarle who, like Reynolds, had been one of the Oxford commissioners in 1647, been appointed to fill a vacancy at Christ Church, but refused the 1650 Engagement. HP Commons 1660-1690, iii. 125. His son Edward Reynolds became archdeacon of Norfolk in 1661. The appointment of another former Presbyterian, Horatio Townshend, Baron Townshend, as lord lieutenant suggested a congenial political environment for the new bishop. HP Commons 1660-1690, iii. 580. Norwich corporation, with a reputation for collusion with radical puritans and assertive autonomy, seems to have had a reasonably cordial relationship with Reynolds: in 1666 he lent the corporation money, interest free, when it was suffering from the devastating effects of plague. J.T. Evans, 17th Cent. Norwich, 245, 247, 322; Norf. RO, ms 453. The town clerk, however, was friendly with under-secretary Sir Joseph Williamson^‡ and with the dean of Norwich, John Crofts (brother of William Crofts, Baron Crofts), who by the late 1660s was in dispute with his chapter over what they represented as his efforts to engross the revenues and powers of the chapter. Norf. RO, DCN 29/2, f. 294; Harl. 3784, f. 55; A Miscellany (Norf. Rec. Soc. xxvii), 24-29; Norf. RO, DCN 29/2, f. 282, 29/4, f. 25, 89/21, f. 22; DCN 92; Tanner 134, ff. 71-72.

Having spent three months in the diocese, preaching frequently according to his friend, the physician Sir Thomas Browne, Reynolds returned to London in November 1661 to attend Parliament and Convocation. Sir T. Browne Works, vi. 16. In the revision of the Book of Common Prayer undertaken through Convocation, Reynolds was responsible for composing the general thanksgiving, generally seen as a concession to the Presbyterian wing of the Church. Cardwell, 372; Swainson, Parl. Hist., 16. Reynolds was an unenthusiastic parliamentarian. He did not attend for more than half of the 14 sessions held during his episcopate, ceasing to attend altogether after 1667. He took his seat in the House with the re-admitted bishops on 20 Nov., and attended regularly until the prorogation on 19 May 1662. He was named to some 21 select committees, including a bill on Norwich manufactures and the Uniformity bill. LJ, xi. 340-477. During angry exchanges in the House in early February 1662 over the Commons’ amendments to the bill for settling ministers, he was one of the seven bishops organized by Clarendon to resist the amendments aimed at Presbyterians. Rawdon Pprs. 136-38. In late March he was said to have joined Morley, John Gauden, bishop of Exeter, and ‘the Presbyterian party in the House’ to attempt to ensure that Interregnum ‘intruders’ might keep their livings and have a royal dispensation from wearing the surplice and from using the sign of the cross in baptism. HMC Somerset, 94; Add. 22919, f. 203; HMC Hastings, iv. 129.

According to one of the Norwich correspondents of William Sancroft, later archbishop of Canterbury, little had been done in the city itself by April 1662 to remove nonconformist ministers. Harl. 3784, f. 55. Reynolds approached compliance with the Act of Uniformity with some display of efficiency, recording subscriptions to the declaration in the Act on a printed form. Tanner 137, f. 36. He conducted his first visitation in October 1662 with the warm support of Sir William and Sir Robert Paston, later earl of Yarmouth, and ‘hundreds of his orthodox clergy ... loyal gentry and other persons of quality’. VCH Norfolk, ii. 298. Unlike those of his episcopal colleagues who issued standard articles, however, Reynolds issued a diluted version, omitting references to episcopal ordination, and requiring clergy only to ‘assent’ but not to ‘consent’ to the Thirty-nine Articles. Articles to be enquired of in the diocese of Norwich (1662), 2; Green, Re-establishment of the Church of England, 135-8; Reynolds, The Pastoral Office (1663). There is no doubt that he turned a blind eye to issues of conformity amongst his clergy, and he was clearly unwilling to persecute Dissenters. Reynolds, Whole Works ed. Pitman (1826), i. lxvii. Under Townshend, the lieutenancy was also slow to act, although a communication from the deputy lieutenants in Oct. 1661 concerning a minister certified by Reynolds suggests that even they felt that Reynolds might have been on occasion too indulgent. HP Commons 1660-1690, i. 329; Norfolk Lieutenancy Journal 1660-1676 ed. R.M. Dunn (Norf. Rec. Soc. xlv), 10-11.

His wife ill, Reynolds did not attend the parliamentary session from February to July 1663, registering his proxy in favour of John Earle, bishop of Worcester, on 13 Feb. 1663. On 23 Feb. he was excused attendance at a call of the House, Townshend speaking on his behalf. HMC Townshend, 25. In his absence, it was assumed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, that the proxy would be used to oppose Bristol’s impeachment attempt of George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol against Clarendon. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 224. In August 1663 he was reporting to Clarendon on the efforts he and Townshend had made to reconcile differences in Great Yarmouth over the clergy there, and his success in achieving the appointment as curate in the town of Clarendon’s former chaplain, Lionel Gatford. Bodl. Clarendon 80, f. 167.

For the session that ran from 16 Mar. to 17 May 1664, Reynolds attended for more than 90 per cent of the sittings. He was named to committees on the transportation of felons, and on seamen and navy stores. In May he was present throughout the passage of the conventicle bill. LJ, xi. 604-21. In the following session, from 24 Nov. 1664 to 2 Mar. 1665, Reynolds attended for some 60 per cent of sittings. On 7 Dec. 1664 at a call of the House it was noted that he was travelling to London; he arrived on 12 Dec. and during the session was named to nine committees, five on private bills including legislation for the Norfolk gentleman (and tenant of the Church) Sir Jacob Astley^‡. LJ, xi. 636-69; Tanner 41, f. 205. Reynolds was also named to the committee on the Medway navigability which he chaired on 28 Jan. 1665. LJ, xi. 645; PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 35. He did not attend the Oxford Parliament in the autumn of 1665, again registering his proxy in favour of John Earle.

Leniency against Dissent in Norwich increasingly attracted hostility and revealed the gulf between mutually exclusive perceptions of the English church. On 3 Nov. 1665, one newsletter reported that Townshend had discharged a number of conventiclers, including ‘a notorious Presbyterian in Suffolk who has not subscribed to conformity’ and who had been privately ordained by Reynolds. CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 40. Reynolds inquiries for the census of conventicles in 1669 revealed that the diocese had 81 nonconformist meetings, over half of which were attended by Independents and Quakers. Only nine of the total were of separate Presbyterian meetings. LPL, ms 639.

Reynolds attended the House for the 1666-7 session over 70 per cent of sittings and was named to 15 select committees, including eight on private bills, of which at least three were associated with Presbyterians or their families. Together with Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, he was named to Lady Holles’s naturalization bill. LJ, xii. 13. In the aftermath of the Fire of London, he preached a sermon before the Lords in Westminster Abbey on 7 Nov. 1666 calling for moderation, and implicitly, at least, the reversal of the current policy on nonconformity. He was named to the committee on the Wharton lead mines bill (involving the interests of the bishops of Durham) on 17 Dec., and in January 1667 he was named to the committee on a bill involving the earl of Manchester. LJ, xii. 95. In the next, long session that ran from October 1667, in which legislation for comprehension was widely anticipated, Reynolds attended on an almost daily basis. He was named to 14 select committees, including the Norfolk land exchange bill involving Lord Townshend and the rector of Raynham. LJ, xii. 128. On 5 Nov. 1667, he preached ‘very excellently’ in the chapel royal on the significance of the day for Protestants. Add. 36916, ff. 5-6. Two days later, he was named to the committee on the trial of peers and on 16 Nov. to the committee on the lead mines owned by John Cosin, bishop of Durham. One of the 22 bishops present on 20 Nov. for the impeachment of Clarendon, he was present for the long debate on the Commons’ charges. Although Samuel Pepys^‡ had the idea that Reynolds voted against Clarendon, he was probably mistaken, and Reynolds voted with most of his episcopal colleagues. Pepys Diary, viii. 542 and n.

There is no evidence of Reynolds’ direct involvement in the discussions over comprehension in early 1668, although one of those who were, Hezekiah Burton, a Norwich canon, was on close terms with him. Reliquiae Baxterianae, pt. 3, 24; Norf. RO, DCN 29/4, f. 24; Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker, 72. One nineteenth century commentator maintains that Reynolds was indeed involved, but there is no other evidence of this. The Works of Symon Patrick ed. A. Taylor (1858), v. 257. On Easter Day 1668, Reynolds preached at Whitehall on his well-worn theme of national reconciliation. Reynolds, A Sermon preached before the king at Whitehall (London, 1668). Pepys, finding that ‘the old Presbyterian’ had started ‘a very plain sermon’, left early to hear the Italian singing in the Queen’s chapel instead. Pepys Diary, ix. 126. Throughout the spring, Reynolds was named to eight more select committees including those on bills for Sir Thomas Hebblethwaite^‡ and Sir Kingsmill Lucy^‡. LJ, xii. 210, 214, 219, 230, 236. He was present on 9 May 1668 when the House was adjourned until August. It was his last day in the House. Thereafter he entered his proxy at the start of each session.

Reynolds remained a reasonably active diocesan, advancing his family interests—during the summer his brother John was appointed archdeacon of Norwich—and responding to a request from Henry Bennet, Baron Arlington to unite a Suffolk living (of which Arlington was already the patron) with its larger neighbour. CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 460; CSP Dom. 1668-9, pp. 107-8. In early January 1669 Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury chivvied Reynolds to deal swiftly with an upsurge of Dissent in Ipswich by cooperating with the civil magistrates. Bodl. Add. C 308, f. 130v. In March he was faced with the dispute between the cathedral chapter and the dean. Tanner 134, ff. 71-72; NRO, DCN 29/4, ff. 25, 27. Although he stayed away from Parliament, Reynolds still visited London, preaching at Whitehall on 28 Mar., pleading for a return to traditional piety. Reynolds, A Sermon preached before the king, upon the 28 March 1669 (London, 1669). On 15 Oct., four days before the start of the next parliamentary session, he entered his proxy in favour of John Wilkins, bishop of Chester (the proxy vacated at the end of the session) and on 26 Oct. it was noted by the House that he was sick. He again gave his proxy to Wilkins on 21 Feb. 1670 for the duration of the whole session.

In 1670 the dean of Norwich, John Crofts, died and was replaced by Herbert Astley, son-in-law of the Member of the Commons for Norfolk, Sir John Hobart^‡, and a relative of Jacob Astley, 3rd Baron Astley. Corresp. of Thomas Corie ed. R. Hill et al. (Norf. Rec. Soc. xxvii), 61. Astley, who apparently enjoyed a closer relationship with Sheldon, Arlington and other courtiers than did Reynolds, may have had an immediate impact on the vigour of ecclesiastical government. Norf. RO, DCN 29/2, f. 300; Tanner 285, ff. 173, 183. In 1670—unlike in 1663—a visitation of the archdeaconry of Norwich recorded the presentation of numerous parishioners for non-attendance at church and for the moral offences that came within the remit of the church courts. Norf. RO, ANW/1/30, ANW/2/81. In June Reynolds received a command from Arlington to investigate claims by the mayor of Sudbury—a place which would continue to be a problem for some years to come—of the misuse of a local church by ‘fanatics’, where the bishop had failed to present a minister for several years. CSP Dom. 1670 and Addenda 1660-70, pp. 303, 518-19; Bodl. Add. C 308, f. 236; VCH Norfolk, ii. 299. In October he responded to Sheldon’s inquiries about his outlay on the repair of the cathedral and other charitable gifts since the Restoration. Tanner 135, f. 182, Tanner 137, f. 34. In August 1671 he wrote crossly to Alexander Denton about an attempt from the court to issue a mandamus for a lay position in his own gift, probably the commissary of Norwich archdeaconry. CSP Dom. 1671, p. 433. The same month Reynolds wrote an irritated rebuke to Mordaunt Webster, a curate at King’s Lynn after the corporation of King’s Lynn complained about his failure to preach, and his obstruction to the arrangements Reynolds had made to provide for a preacher, though the case ended up in the court of arches and with Sheldon, and by January 1672 Webster was writing to the new dean complaining about how Reynolds had encouraged the factious corporation. Tanner 134, ff. 129, 133, 146, 215, 235. A month later the king visited Norwich with James Stuart, duke of York, James Scott, duke of Monmouth, and George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham. After a service in the cathedral, the king visited Reynolds at the bishop’s palace in the company of York, Buckingham and Henry Howard, later 6th duke of Norfolk. Corresp. of Thomas Corie, 32-36.

Now permanently absent from the House, indeed, said to be dying, in January 1673 he gave his proxy to Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham. Carte 77, f. 536. The same month, while apparently at death’s door, he received a direct communication from the king ‘reinforcing’ the appointment of the royal candidate as commissary. CSP Dom. 1672-3, p. 440. A few months later, a royal command threatened to upset the arrangements Reynolds had made to make his own grandson joint registrar of the consistory court: Reynolds sought the intervention of Sheldon and Sir John Nicholas^‡. Longleat, Bath mss, Coventry 7, f. 22; Tanner 138, f. 9. On 9 Jan. 1674, two days after the start of session, he gave his proxy to John Dolben, bishop of Rochester. Both proxies were vacated at the end of the session. In May, he was reported ill of the strangury, and his death was still expected in July. Tanner 130, f. 144, Tanner 115, f. 170.

He soldiered on, however, and on 12 Apr. 1675 and again on 8 Oct. 1675 entered his proxy in favour of John Dolben. He might perhaps have become involved in the fiercely contested Norfolk by-election on 10 May 1675 by supporting Townshend’s candidate Sir Robert Kemp^‡. Tanner 42, f. 148. Reynolds responded to the Compton Census (named after Henry Compton, bishop of London) in January 1676 by asking whether the census was supposed to cover women and children as well as men in the total number of nonconformists: Williamson’s Yarmouth correspondent thought the corporation there had raised the query, anxious as they were to disguise the high numbers in the town. Tanner 42, f. 219; CSP Dom. 1675-6, pp. 567-68. With Reynolds very ill again at the turn of the year, Astley was already looking forward to the king’s choice of a successor ‘whose sincerity, vigilancy, prudence, and courage may in some measure answer the necessities of this diocese’. Tanner 285, f. 173. The sentiment was echoed after Townshend’s dismissal from the lieutenancy in February by Williamson’s Yarmouth correspondent, who claimed that the ‘the king’s and the Church’s friends’ had been oppressed to the point that they were ‘little less cowed than they were under old Oliver’. CSP Dom. 1675-6, pp. 567-68. The news that Reynolds was planning an episcopal visitation in person at Easter 1676 elicited the comment that the visitation was essential to relieve ‘the great indisposition of his flock’, but after Reynolds’ death, it was noted in King’s Lynn that no visitation had taken place there for many years. HMC 6th Rep. 375. CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 400.

Shortly before his death, Reynolds replaced his deceased brother John as archdeacon with his son-in-law John Conant, a former Oxford vice-chancellor and divinity professor who had initially failed to subscribe under the Act of Uniformity. Fasti, 1541-1857, vii. 44-6. Reynolds died on 28 July 1676. Forbidding any wine or ‘banqueting provisions’ at his funeral, he died leaving over £1,600 in cash bequests plus an annuity to his widowed daughter, the return to his wife of her own money, and income from his properties in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxford, Northamptonshire. PROB 11/351. A funeral sermon acknowledged that Reynolds was not a conventional Anglican bishop and that many thought him negligent ‘because he would not drive their pace... not govern by their rules, not execute censures at their heights, nor interpret canons in their sense’. Mems. of Alderman Whitmore, Bp. Wilkins, Bp. Reynolds, Alderman Adams, 25. Reynolds was buried in the bishop’s palace chapel he had himself constructed in 1662. He was succeeded by Anthony Sparrow, a man of a very different type of churchmanship. Tanner 285, f. 170v.