FELL, John (1625-86)

John Fell came from a family firmly connected with Church and university. His father, Samuel Fell, became dean of Christ Church in 1638, and John Fell and his many siblings followed their father into university and ecclesiastical posts, or married into families of similar background. Originally from London, Samuel Fell acquired substantial property in Berkshire, the most prominent of which was Gaunt House, which had reputedly been built by John of Gaunt in the 14th century. Wood, Life and Times, i. 272. John Fell joined the king’s army at Oxford and served in the garrison there until the city’s fall in June 1646. The following year he was ordained and for the remainder of the interregnum ministered to a congregation of perhaps 300 Anglicans in spite of his deprivation by the parliamentary visitors and supposed banishment from Oxford. Wood, Athen. Ox. iv. 194. In this Fell was assisted by his lifelong friends Richard Allestree and John Dolben, later archbishop of York.

On the eve of the Restoration, Fell published The Interest of England Stated, a pamphlet that sought to demonstrate the manner in which the commonwealth and protectorate had failed and how the only solution for the country’s ills was the return of the monarchy. Fell argued that ‘as an hereditary Prince’ the king’s ‘private interest must be the same with that of the nation’, extolled ‘his moderation, sobriety and justice’, and declared that ‘no person in the world, besides the king, is in a capacity to avert the impendent ruin’ of the nation. J. Fell, The Interest of England Stated (1659), 9, 15.

Fell greeted the return of the secluded members in February 1660 with considerable scepticism, commenting to his young friend Thomas Thynne, later Viscount Weymouth:

You will hardly believe … with what coldness we heard of the admission of the secluded members, that entertained the promise of it with infinite joys, and extravagant triumphs. The reason of our change is your general’s speech, and the engagement that the members took; the effects of which, our long acquaintance with a knavish world, bids us suspect. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 12, f. 150.

Canvassing openly in the royalist interest for the Convention, Fell asserted that ‘by my particular employment, and my engagements for the parliament candidates I have scarce a day in the week at my disposal’. Ibid. f. 155. His labours were rewarded at the Restoration when he was restored to his fellowship. Further preferment followed rapidly and indicated the importance that the restored government attached to Oxford as a breeding ground for men of assured royalist sentiment. Fell responded to this trust by endeavouring to make the university, and Christ Church in particular, synonymous with elite, loyal Anglicanism. He was particularly successful in attracting the sons of the nobility and gentry to his college, forging especially close relations with the Yelverton family and with Heneage Finch, later earl of Nottingham, Christopher Hatton, Baron Hatton (later Viscount Hatton), Thynne, and James Butler, duke of Ormond.

Fell became vice-chancellor of Oxford in 1666, enabling him to extend the principles that he had inculcated at Christ Church throughout the university. He made strenuous efforts to curb coffee houses, inns, and other places he considered morally harmful, and even established regulations for correct attire for students in order to make more gradations in social status more obvious. His tireless activities and rather dour brand of puritanical Anglicanism won him many enemies, but also a certain degree of admiration. Heneage Finch commented that Fell actively monitored the quality of teaching and learning, as well as the students’ social lives: ‘He is in all things so watchful that he does intend to alter their manners too, as well as their habits; he does so harass them about that everybody … do curse him, which is still but a greater credit and honour to him…’. HMC Finch, i. 443–4. Meanwhile, Fell’s development of Oxford University Press was clearly one of his most important achievements, establishing a printing house devoted to the production of devotional and incontrovertibly royalist works. He also expended great efforts on building projects, overseeing Christopher Wren’s^‡ developments at Christ Church and the construction of new university buildings including the Sheldonian Theatre.

In all these things Fell worked closely with Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, and it was through Sheldon’s patronage that Fell was elected bishop of Oxford in January 1676 when Henry Compton, the incumbent bishop of Oxford, was translated to London. Rumours of Fell’s promotion had been current since at least October of the previous year, when he told Lady Pakington (wife of the former Christ Church student Sir John Pakington^‡) that he found ‘the charge of a college so weighty a duty, as not to think it reasonable to have a diocese added to it’. Over the next few months, reports of his reluctance to accept the bishopric continued to circulate. According to Humphrey Prideaux, one reason for this was Fell’s determination ‘not to keep pluralities’. Prideaux Letters, 47–48. One suspects that the opposite might have been the case. Fell, who insisted that he accepted promotion only at the peremptory command of the king and on the advice of Sheldon and others, maintained that to refuse would be sinful. Uniquely, he was permitted to hold his deanery in commendam with the bishopric and it seems unlikely that this was achieved without negotiation. Worcs. RO, Hampton (Pakington) mss 705:349/4657/(i), 171 and 172; Verney ms mic. M636/29, Sir R. to Edmund Verney, n.d.; Prideaux Letters, 47–48; Bodl. Tanner 147, f. 69. In part, this was an acknowledgement of the relative poverty of the see, which in 1675 had been valued at £381 11s. per annum, but it was also a clear recognition of Fell’s value to the government as a senior figure in the university. Within six weeks of his consecration in February 1676, he announced his primary visitation, the first of four that he would hold during his episcopate. He undoubtedly believed that nonconformity should be suppressed but he also recognized that the Church of England needed to ensure that its own conduct was above reproach to assist in winning back Dissenters into the Anglican fold. M. Clapinson, Bishop Fell and Nonconformity (Oxon. Rec. Soc. lii), p. xxvii.

Fell took his seat in the House on 15 Feb. 1677 at the opening of the first parliamentary session since his elevation to the episcopate, following which he was present on a third of all sitting days and was named to a number of committees. At the same time, he became embroiled with a suit in chancery brought by Thomas Wise over the responsibility for repairing the estate at Hook Norton, part of the former monastery of Osney. TNA, C10/194/37; C33/249, ff. 675–6; C33/251, f. 231. He was absent from the House for the second and third weeks of March; at a call of the House on 9 Mar. Fell’s name was omitted both from the attendance list and from the list of those peers who had left their proxies, although a proxy dated 8 Mar. was registered in favour of Dolben. It was vacated when Fell returned to the House on 21 May, at which point he sat for a further three days before retiring again. Fell resumed his seat in the House on 15 Jan. 1678, after which he sat for a further 19 days before the close of the session. On 28 Feb. he was named to the committee considering the St Asaph cathedral bill and on 11 May to that considering the act to provide relief for Protestant strangers.

In October 1678, Anthony Wood reported that the king had given Fell a patent for an earldom worth £1,000. Fell intended to bestow the patent on a wealthy gentleman commoner of Christ Church, and to use the proceeds towards completing the great gate of the college. The student can be identified as either Francis^† or Alexander Luttrell^†, both of Dunster Castle, whose wealth was much exaggerated and neither of whom was ever elevated to a peerage. Wood, Life and Times, ii. 420–1. Fell was recorded as having attended just one day of the brief session that lasted from May to July 1678. Although he was missing from the attendance list on 23 May, he was named to the committees for petitions and privileges, perhaps suggesting that he was present in the House at some later point during the day. He returned to the House for the new session on 30 Oct. 1678, after which he was present on approximately 69 per cent of sitting days. Against a background of heightened tensions over allegations of a popish plot, during the debates in a committee of the whole house on 15 Nov. over the bill to disable papists from sitting in Parliament, he voted in favour of attaching the same penalty to the declaration against transubstantiation as to the oaths. On 18 Nov. he was entrusted with the proxy of William Thomas, bishop of St Davids, which was vacated by Thomas’ return to the House on 2 December. On 29 Nov. Fell supported the Commons’ address that the queen and all other Catholics should be removed from Whitehall. He continued to be involved with anti-Catholic measures during the session, being named to the committee considering the bill to disable popish recusants from exercising certain trades on 7 Dec. and to that considering the popish recusants’ children’s bill on 12 December.

In January 1679, Ormond’s grandson, James Butler, styled Lord Butler, shortly to become Baron Butler of Moore Park and later 2nd duke of Ormond, was entrusted to Fell’s safekeeping at Christ Church. The year also witnessed Fell’s second visitation of his diocese. Among the enquiries put to the ministers in the diocese were the habitual preoccupations with pluralism and the numbers of ‘heretics, or schismatics’ in the parish; unusually Fell also asked about the Jewish population. Articles of visitation and Enquiry… of… John… Lord Bishop of Oxford (1679). He took his seat in the new session of Parliament on 6 Mar. 1679, attending on three days of the abortive session before returning to Oxford. Verney ms mic. M636/32, Sir R. E. Verney, 13 Mar. 1679. He then resumed his place on 31 Mar. but was present on just 13 days (approximately 21 per cent of the whole). The condition of London during the session disturbed him and in April he professed himself alarmed to find evidence of ‘much more endeavour to prosecute private hatred and ambitions than to promote the public peace’. HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 40. In June, as one of the executors of Walter Blandford, the former bishop of Worcester, he became involved in a protracted dispute with the new bishop, James Fleetwood, over the allocation of funds from Blandford’s estate to contribute towards repairs at Hartlebury Castle. The case went against him. Bodl. Tanner 38, f. 46; Tanner 140, f. 144–5, 150.

The dissolution of the first Exclusion Parliament in July 1679 and summoning of the second surprised Fell. He viewed the forthcoming elections with little enthusiasm, complaining to Thynne that:

unless the elections are better elsewhere than they are likely to be in this neighbourhood, there will be little gained by the last dissolution. It is a sad thing to see the sober and considerable gentlemen of the nation utterly give out, and leave the house to be filled by commonwealth men and fanatics. Thynne pprs. 12, f. 230.

Fell’s worries about the Oxfordshire elections proved to be well founded. The moderate Sir Edward Norreys^‡ appears to have withdrawn before the poll, leaving the seat to be contested by three exclusionists. The city seats were also secured by exclusionists. Only the university remained relatively untouched by the crisis. HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 357, 359–62.

Fell’s unpopularity among many within Oxford was perhaps reflected by the fact that when James Scott, duke of Monmouth, visited the city in September 1680 healths were drunk ‘to the confusion of the bishop’, who had effectively snubbed the duke. CSP Dom. 1680–81, p. 31; HMC Le Fleming, 172. Despite his own determined opposition to Catholicism, Fell’s loyalty to the monarchy proved unshakeable. He took his seat in the new Parliament on 3 Nov. 1680, after which he was present on a third of all sitting days, and on 15 Nov. he voted in favour of rejecting the exclusion bill on its first reading. Fell’s account of the debate in his weekly bulletin to Lady Hatton clearly reflected both his weariness with the day’s exertions and his fears for the future:

My Lord [Hatton] and the rest of the house of Peers, are under somewhat hard duty, being detained yesterday about twelve hours, before we were dismissed; so that it was ten of the clock at night before we had liberty to eat our breakfasts. The occasion which detained us was the bill of exclusion of the duke of York, which the Lords, to the great dissatisfaction of the Commons have cast out … We are not far from breaking out into hostility. I pray God restrain the minds of unquiet and tumultuous men. Add. 29582, f. 3.

Fell voted against appointing a joint committee of Lords and Commons to consider the state of the kingdom on 23 November. The following month, on 22 Dec., he preached before the House on the importance of unity and of the dangers of schism. He took as his text Matthew xii. 25, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation’, arguing that:

schism is so severely branded in the holy scripture, that even they who place their religion in separation acknowledge the guilt of it; and lay the blame of their dissent on those from whom they differ; alleging either the immorality of their lives, or errors in the faith: and in fine, resolve their separation is therefore innocent because ’twas necessary. John Fell, Sermon Preached before the House of Peers, on December 22, 1680 (1746), 14.

The dissolution of Parliament in January 1681 troubled Fell profoundly and he lamented that it ‘strikes a great damp upon the minds of all who have a concernment for the king’s safety and the government. I pray God the intended parliament may sit, and the king and nation reap benefit thereby.’ Bodl. Clarendon 155, f. 39. The publication of Fell’s translation of St Cyprian on ‘the unity of the church’ the same year further emphasized the necessity for the Church of England to remain united and to attract nonconformists to return.

The summoning of the new Parliament to assemble on 21 Mar. 1681 at Oxford prompted Fell to intervene in the elections. His mediation between the opposing factions headed by John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace, and the lord lieutenant, James Bertie, Baron Norreys (later earl of Abingdon), initially appeared to be successful. When Fell explained to Lovelace ‘the inconveniences which would follow if upon occasion of election of knights for this county dissentions should be fomented’, Lovelace assured the bishop that, ‘however he might be represented as a turbulent person, he desired the service of the king, and peace of the country’. Nevertheless there was a contest for the county as well as for the city of Oxford, and it was the Whigs rather than the government candidates who won. Bodl. Top Oxon. c. 325, f. 15; HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 357, 360.

Aside from his negotiations between the embattled factions in the county, Fell took a prominent role in preparations for the new Parliament, in his role both as bishop and as dean, since Christ Church was to play host to the king and various other university buildings were to be employed as debating chambers, committee rooms, and lodgings. He attended all but one of the days of the brief session and on 25 Mar. he was named to the committee to receive information concerning the plot.

Two months after the dissolution, Fell outlined his political (and religious) position in a letter to Sir Richard Newdigate^‡:

The preservation of the Protestant religion, and the established government, is our common care, but … you imagine the nation can only be preserved, by letting in all dissenters into the Church; and on the other side, we are most firmly persuaded that your proceedings must draw after them the alteration of the government, and Popery: Toleration being certainly destructive of our reformed religion, whether procured by a Lord [Clifford Thomas Clifford, Baron Clifford of Chudleigh] or a popular pretence to the uniting of Protestants … I pray consider, that every one who seems to have the same honest aims with you, is not sincere as you are. We remember very well the time, when blood and rapine put on the mask of Godliness and reformation; and we lost our king, our liberty and property and religion … I hope we shall still continue: and be as willing to suffer and die for our religion, as others are to talk of it. WCRO, CR136/B/413.

The dissolution of Parliament did not free Fell from involvement in heated political divisions within Oxford, as a bitter election for a new town clerk in the summer of 1681 rekindled animosities. CSP Dom. 1680–1, pp. 385, 413, 616. In March 1682 he was compelled to act as mediator between Norreys and the Oxford burgess Brome Whorwood^‡. Their dispute resulted in Whorwood bringing an action of battery against Norreys, while Norreys sued Whorwood for scandalum magnatum. Eager to avoid the kind of rancour that might lead to divisions throughout the county, Fell convinced both men to desist, gaining in the process ‘great reputation’. Prideaux Letters, 127–8, 130.

In the meantime Fell had published his translation of St Cyprian, a work that intended to double both as an exhortation to unity and obedience to Anglican forms of worship and as a condemnation of Catholicism. At least one of his fellow bishops, Peter Gunning, of Ely, found the work provocative, suggesting that,

it may be feared … not seasonable at this time of all to debate or expatiate about the bounds of metropolitans, what and how much of their jus metropoliticum came from the apostle and ever has been in the Church … it may be feared, I say lest some that zealously follow the independency of each bishop asserted lately in a posthumous book put out under the name of Dr Isaac Barrow* [the former bishop of St Asaph], of the unity of the Church … may greedily catch at this passage in the preface being dedicated to all the bishops etc. And lest the same also be catched at by Mr [Richard] Baxter and his followers in his new model of episcopacy. Add. 29546, ff. 96–102.

Predictably, Fell reacted with disgust and astonishment to the revelations of the Rye House Plot in 1683, though he appears to have welcomed the possibility that it might provide the impetus to call a new Parliament. Hatton Corresp. ii. 27–28. He argued forcefully for a day of public thanksgiving that would also provide an opportunity ‘of representing to the nation the detestable effects of sedition and discontent’. Tanner 34, f. 55.

Political divisions within Oxford continued to trouble Fell during negotiations over the granting of a new charter. In August 1683 he pressed Sir Leoline Jenkins^‡ to ensure that the charter secured the independence of the university and added that, ‘unless you remove the high steward, Alderman Wright and Mr Pawling and set the city entirely on a loyal bottom, your reformation will signify nothing and all will return in a short time to the old pass’. Bad-tempered discussions continued throughout the summer of 1683 and into the following year. July–Sept. 1683, p. 325; CPS Dom. 1683–4, p. 347. Monmouth’s return to court and pardon in December caused Fell further disquiet; Fell told Hatton that ‘there are not such tides in the sea wherewith you are encompassed as there is in Court interest and favour’. Hatton Corresp. ii. 41.

In November 1684 Fell came under pressure from the government to eject John Locke from Christ Church. CSP Dom. 1684–5, p. 211. He made a token effort to protect his controversial student and justified his failure to expel him hitherto, explaining that he had ‘for divers years had an eye upon him’ but that ‘after several strict enquiries I may confidently affirm there is not any man in the college, however familiar with him who had heard him speak either against or so much as concerning the government’. He went on to point out that Locke was at that time absent through ill health. He had summoned Locke to return, ‘which is done with this prospect, that if he comes not back, he will be liable to expulsion for contumacy; and if he does he will be answerable to the law for what he has done amiss’. This neat solution did not satisfy the king, and Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, instructed Fell to expel Locke forthwith. Add. 4290, ff. 15–16.

It may well have been as a result of the unwanted publicity created by the Locke affair that Fell wrote to Denis Granville, dean of Durham, in December, appealing to him to refrain from publishing a book critical of the university. Fell explained that,

reflections made upon what passes in the University, which although said with a good mind by you, will be of ill consequence to us … You cannot be ignorant what endeavours are used by the Papists, fanatics, travailed fops, wits, virtuosi, and atheists; a list of men that make a great number in the kingdom, to disparage and decry university education, and affright all persons from sending their children hither; by which means, much of the growing youth of the nation, are bred by little pedagogues in ignorance, and either without principles, or with such as are worse than none … Bodl. Rawl. D.850, f. 267.

Despite his own anti-Catholicism, Fell does not seem to have been worried by the accession of James II. In February 1685, just weeks after Charles II’s death, he wrote confidently that the elections in Oxfordshire were ‘likely to pass here without contest; those who were busy against the succession, being not willing to provoke more anger’. He remained confident as the elections progressed, writing in early March ‘that if the house be as unanimous after the choice, as the several bodies were in choosing, there will be no faction to disturb the government’, but this was in itself cause for concern. In that letter he continued ‘God grant a like concern for the preservation of Religion’; three weeks earlier he had predicted that the Parliament ‘probably will be made of men, who if not altered by the genius of the place, will be very apt to comply, with what will be desired of them’. Add. 29582, ff. 215, 227, 235. His charge to the clergy at the initiation of his final visitation in March was even more revealing:

I need not tell you in what condition the Church now is, assaulted by the furious malice of Papists on the one hand and fanatics on the other, and, amidst the machinations of those who are zealous for a sect or party, more fatally attempted by the licentiousness and sloth of those who are indifferent to any or opposite to all. Tanner 31, ff. 156–7; Clapinson, Bishop Fell, p. xxxv.

By late March he commented gloomily that

the ferment is so strong in many places, and as I am told particularly in the north, that a great many who were against the succession will be chosen, which way they intend to do mischief it is not easy to guess; but such men are likely to do mischief one way or another. Add. 29582, f. 241.

Fell took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 19 May 1685, after which he was present on approximately 44 per cent of all sitting days. The outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion during the summer precipitated his return to Oxford. Bodl. Top. Oxon. c. 325, f. 41. Admonished by the Lords for failing to attend during the crisis, he excused himself by arguing that his presence in Oxford was crucial to its defence: ‘I think I should have done ill to turn my back upon this place, which happened to have scarce any one present, who could take care of it.’ Add. 29582, f. 256. In close partnership with Abingdon and Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, he proposed the establishment of several companies of volunteers from among the students at Oxford. Anxious to avoid inflaming rivalries between the university and the civic authorities, Fell recommended Montagu Bertie, styled Lord Norreys (later 2nd earl of Abingdon), as commander of the new force; Norreys was himself a student, but he was also the son and heir to the lord lieutenant. Morgan Lib. Misc English, Fell to Clarendon, 20 June 1685.

News of the defeat of the rebellion gave Fell little cause for rejoicing. In July he wrote to Hatton noting how, ‘by God’s blessing we are free from the hazard of one sort of Enthusiasts, he grant we may not be overrun by another’. Add. 29582, f. 280. Reports that Monmouth had attempted to save his life by professing a willingness to convert elicited a weary response:

We are here told that the Protestant Duke does now declare himself to be of the Church of Rome. I am not so hard hearted to envy that Church the reputation of such a proselyte; if the story be true, I hope it may be of good use to instruct the wretched populace, who run out of their lives and fortunes to free themselves from the government of their lawful sovereign, because he is of the Church of Rome; when they find the usurper whom they would set up, through all the miseries of war to be of the same religion. But I fear the madness of sectaries cannot be cured by any conviction. Add. 29582, f. 325.

Concerns about Church and state went alongside a preoccupation with the marital prospects of Hatton’s young (and flighty) brother-in-law, Henry Yelverton, 15th Baron Grey of Ruthin (later Viscount Longueville). Throughout the summer, a stream of letters witnessed Fell’s exasperation with Grey’s refusal to commit to what Fell believed to be an eminently suitable match. Add. 29583, ff. 218, 345; Add. 29582, ff. 276, 278, 282, 284, 286, 288, 307.

Fell was both disillusioned and ill. In November he was approached by a number of senior clerics eager to persuade him to attend the winter sessions but he refused, ‘saying it was too late, all attempts would be in vain, for Popery would come in’. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 51. He thought better of his decision and took his seat on 11 Nov. but sat for just seven days before retiring from the House for the final time. He remained uncompromising in his attitude to Charles Gerard, styled Viscount Brandon (later 2nd earl of Macclesfield), who was convicted in November 1685 for his part in the Rye House Plot, hoping that ‘he may close a very licentious life, by a recollected and pious death’. Add. 29582, f. 319.

Over the next few months a variety of reports indicate that Fell’s health was in rapid decline. Add. 72481, f. 87; Add. 70013, ff. 310–11; Hatton Corresp. ii. 62; Add. 29582, ff. 329, 331, 335; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 163; HMC Downshire, i. 193. Between 11 and 26 June 1686 he composed a new will, and he finally succumbed on 10 July. He was buried in his cathedral at Christ Church and a memorial was erected by his nephews, Thomas Willis and Henry Jones. Wood, Athen. Ox. iv. 200. In his will, Fell made a number of bequests, including a £15 annuity to Francis Davis, vicar of Spelsbury, ‘an indigent and helpless person’. Fell’s nephews, Jones and Willis, together with John Crosse, were named trustees and charged with raising funds from Fell’s estates over a ten-year period towards the establishment of a charity for ‘ingenious and indigent’ students at Christ Church. A codicil of 27 June made bequests of personal items to Fell’s many friends among the nobility, including Hatton, Grey of Ruthin, the dowager countess of Rochester, the countess of Abingdon, and the dowager Baroness Lovelace.

Fell’s death was a profound blow both to the university and diocese, and the succession to the deanery of a lay Catholic, John Massey, was something that Fell himself would have found quite unconscionable. Assessments of his achievements were mixed. John Aubrey was scathing, commenting only, ‘who can pardon such a dry bone? a stalking, consecrated engine of hypocrisy’. Wood was more generous, concluding that ‘he was a bold and resolute man, and did not value what the generality said or thought of him so that he could accomplish his just and generous designs: which being too many to effect, was the chief reason of shortening his days’. Ibid. iv. 197. Evelyn reckoned his death ‘an extraordinary loss at this time to the poor church’, whereas Morrice, though conceding that the bishop had not been aware of their ‘viciousness’, concluded that Fell had not served his students well and had permitted himself to be fooled into believing in their moral uprightness when they lived corrupt lives thinly veneered with exterior conformity. Evelyn Diary, iv. 519; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 205.