LAKE, John (1624-89)

John Lake served in arms for the royalist cause in the first Civil War before entering holy orders. At the Restoration his appointment to the living of Leeds was so unpopular with the Puritan laity that it sparked civil disorder. CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 121; VCH Yorks. iii. 68. He was brought to the attention of Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury and summoned to London where he was given a City living and a prebend of St Paul’s. He also held ecclesiastical office in his native Yorkshire where he dealt abrasively with local youths who used the minster as a meeting place on Sundays and holidays. Tempers finally snapped in February 1673 when he tried to disperse those who had gathered in the minster and minster yard on Shrove Tuesday. Troops had to be called to deal with the ensuing riot and to protect Lake’s house. Lake was so unpopular that after he had repaired his broken windows the rioters returned and broke them again. This was merely the latest and worst of ‘several other remarkable circumstances of disorder’, and Lake was so incensed at what he perceived as the reluctance of the lord mayor to take appropriate action to quell the riot that he sent a lengthy account of the incident to Sir Joseph Williamson^‡ and asked him to report it to Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, ‘and whether he will stir up the lord mayor to a diligent inquiry after so great a violation of public peace and order, and a care to prevent the like for the future.’ The corporation then become afraid that the incident would be interpreted as a local manifestation of the problems being experienced in London as Parliament fought to overturn the Declaration of Indulgence. CSP Dom. 1672-3, pp. 546-7; 1673, p. 36. Such incidents, so easily interpreted as politically motivated, probably helped rather than hindered Lake’s career in the Church, but he was also assisted by influential connections. At St Paul’s (and perhaps earlier given his Yorkshire connections) he came into contact with William Sancroft, the future archbishop of Canterbury. He also formed a friendship with Sancroft’s companion Dr Henry Paman. At some point before 1679 he became chaplain to the duke of York. As prebendary of Cleveland he came to the attention of William Stanley, 9th earl of Derby, and speculation about the vacant deanery of Norwich in 1681 reveals that he also enjoyed the patronage of Robert Paston, earl of Yarmouth.

Lake made his political loyalties abundantly clear. When, in the summer of 1682 in the wake of the Exclusion debates, the corporation of Pontefract (where Lake owned property) added his name to their loyal address, at the suggestion of Sir John Kaye^‡, Lake complained that

although no man would be more free and forward to subscribe an Address, which in good language, breathed that loyalty which it pretended to: yet in such a case I would judge for myself; and I detest and abhor such a trifle as that (which hath neither matter, nor words in it) as much as the late tumultuous petitions. … it adds (lawful successors) so improperly and impertinently that I think it had better have been left out. In short, such is my present sense of it, that if all my brethren of the clergy had signed it, I would not; and I would (if it was practicable) go twice as far as Pontefract to blot my name out again; and when it is published, I shall blush to think that my name is at a thing, which will look … so scandalously, amongst the meanest of the addresses which have hitherto been made. Bodl. ms Eng. Hist. e. 47, f. 5.

In autumn 1682 Derby (in his capacity as lord of Man) nominated Lake to the bishopric of Sodor and Man. The see was a poor one and did not qualify the holder to sit in the House of Lords. It is unlikely that Lake spent much time there, and he soon wearied of the post. In March 1684 John Dolben, of York, recommended him as a candidate for the recently vacant see of Carlisle. As a Yorkshire man who ‘after many years well spent in better company’ had returned to the north and experienced life in the Isle of Man, Lake was thought well suited to life on the Scottish border. His one weakness ‘a little roughness sometimes, and but sometimes observable in him … will not be unsuitable for such a rough country’. When he failed to secure Carlisle he reluctantly settled instead for Bristol, an impoverished and difficult see that had already been turned down by the Anglican polemicist, Thomas Long. The appointment was delayed for several months, in part so that Lake would be able to assist Dolben in the consecration of Edward Rainbow, as bishop of Carlisle, but more importantly so that Lake could ‘make some profit in Man which hitherto hath yielded very little’. Bodl. Tanner 32, ff. 11, 28, 37-38, 45.

Lake arrived in Bristol in the immediate aftermath of the divisive quo warranto action against the corporation. The city was, he reported, ‘divided and distracted and there are persons truly and highly loyal on both hands’. On his arrival in September 1684 he noted that Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort, was actively interfering in clerical appointments and began to get the measure of Richard Thompson, the quarrelsome dean of whom he remarked that ‘all things are fair and friendly thus far … but if any man would bet upon nature’s side I durst scarcely wager with him’. By November he declared that if it were not for Thompson and his ally, Sir John Knight^‡, ‘I could render Bristol easy enough’. He had also taken steps to secure an alliance with Beaufort, whose mind had been poisoned against him. Ibid. ff. 142, 179.

At the accession of James II, Lake went out of his way to ensure that Bristol presented itself in a good light, arranging for not one but four loyal addresses from different interests within the city and a fifth from the clergy. Ibid. f. 226. His brief tenure of the bishopric does seem to have buttressed Beaufort’s own authority. With a new charter in place and political opposition suppressed, the March 1685 election to James II’s first Parliament proved more peaceable than previous contests. HJ, x. 25; HP Commons 1660-90, i. 237.

On 19 May 1685 Lake took his seat in the Lords. Although he attended the session for almost 60 per cent of sittings, Lake was not active in the business of the House and was appointed to only two select committees. By June there was already talk of a further translation, not so much in recognition of Lake’s merits but as part of James II’s determination to create a vacancy in order to promote his loyal supporter, Sir Jonathan Trelawny, the future bishop of Bristol, Exeter and Winchester to a west country see. At that point the possibility was translation to Peterborough. But on 8 July when Lake wrote enthusiastically to Sancroft about Beaufort’s activity in ensuring that Bristol would not fall to supporters of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, he added a request for translation to Chichester instead which had become vacant by the death of Guy Carleton, two days earlier. When the request was promptly granted Lake wrote of his relief at being delivered from his confrontational dean, Richard Thompson, who ‘seemeth to emulate ... the bitter zeal of his grand exemplar’, namely Thomas Pierce, dean of Salisbury. Tanner, 31, ff. 117, 131, 148. In September he journeyed to Lichfield to conduct a visitation there during the suspension of Thomas Wood, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. By November he was in Chichester where there was so much business to transact that he had to delay his attendance at the House for a few days. Ibid. ff. 188, 227. He returned to Westminster on 12 Nov. 1685, but the session lasted for only another week before the first of many prorogations.

Lake found his new diocese to have been much neglected. Despite Carleton’s efforts, Lake considered the diocese to be ‘singularly factious and fanatic’ with conventicles in the major towns and Catholics eagerly seeking converts. During his first visitation in 1686 he travelled to places ‘where no man alive has seen a bishop before’. He also inherited yet another difficult local relationship, this time with the diocesan chancellor, Thomas Briggs. Tanner 30, ff. 16, 63; Tanner 31, f. 128; E. Suss. RO, ASH 931, 5 June 1686. In Chichester he replicated the strategy he had operated in Bristol by reorganizing city worship to make cathedral sermons more accessible and to strengthen the Church’s hold on the city and diocese by dividing the dissenters. Tanner 29, f. 9; Tanner 30, f. 16. It was something of a testimony to his previous success in Bristol, and to the trust he inspired in Sancroft, that in July he was sent to Salisbury to deal with Thomas Pierce in an attempt to restore harmony to the chapter there. Tanner 30, ff. 72, 112, 116; Tanner 143, f. 159.

By 1687 Lake was identified as an opponent of the king’s religious policies and was known to oppose the repeal of the Tests. He responded promptly to Sancroft’s summons about the reading of the second Declaration of Indulgence, joining his fellow bishops at Lambeth on 18 May 1688 and signing the petition to the king. Together with the other six signatories he refused to enter a recognizance of £500 to appear in king’s bench on a charge of seditious libel and was committed to the Tower. Bodl. Carte 130, f. 317. On 30 June 1688 the Seven Bishops were acquitted and Lake soon returned to Chichester. He conducted a visitation over the summer, finding the clergy ‘tractable’ and the gentry ‘obliging’, and noting that Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, was ‘singularly obliging’. Tanner 28, f. 179.

On 28 Sept. Lake was one of the bishops present at Whitehall to hear the king backtrack on his policies, including a promise to revoke the suspension of Henry Compton, of London, and the abolition of the ecclesiastical commissioners. A few days later, on 3 Oct., he was again at Whitehall with his fellow bishops proffering the demands of the Church to the king, thinly disguised as ‘heads of advice’. Add. 28093, f. 258; Life of James II, ii. 188-9. At the Revolution Lake joined the assembled Lords at Whitehall, signed the address to the Prince of Orange to take on the business of government until the Convention, and was one of those summoned by William to attend him on 28 Dec. 1688. Kingdom without a King, 158, 165-8. He remained, however, firmly opposed to the deposition of James II. When the diarist John Evelyn visited Sancroft on 15 Jan. 1689, he found Lake, Francis Turner, of Ely, and Thomas White, of Peterborough, in attendance, determined on a regency. Evelyn Diary, iv. 613-14.

On 22 Jan. 1689 Lake took his seat in the Convention. He remained in the House throughout the debates on the regency, voted in favour of it on 29 Jan. and opposed the accession of William and Mary on 31 January. He continued to attend throughout the abdication debates of early February, when he voted against the Commons’ wording and entered his protest after the final vote on 6 Feb. 1689. He was present the following day when the House approved the new oaths but although he was present on 18 Feb. to hear the new king’s speech his attendance had become erratic and he made his final appearance in the House on 28 Feb. 1689. Following Sancroft’s lead, he refused the new oaths, telling the archbishop that he was ‘very proud to be reckoned of the same feather with your grace’. Tanner 27, f. 22. On 27 Aug. 1689, three days before his death, he dictated his final profession of faith, defending the Church’s doctrine of non-resistance. Ibid. f. 77; Stowe 746, f. 116; The Declaration of the Right Reverend Father in God John, late Lord Bishop of Chichester, upon his Deathbed (1689). The statement was carried by William Lloyd, of Norwich, from Lake’s bedside to Lambeth from whence it was dispersed as an encouragement to other non-jurors wrestling with their consciences. After a modest bequest to the poor of Chichester, Lake left an estate of some £400 to be divided between his two sons and his wife Judith. He left his property in Pontefract to his eldest son James, a citizen and haberdasher of London, and his books to his son William, a fellow of St John’s Cambridge who followed in his father’s footsteps as a non-juror. Lake died on 30 Aug. 1689 before he could be deprived formally of his bishopric and was buried on 3 Sept. in St Botolph’s Church in Bishopsgate.