Andrewes, Lancelot

ANDREWES, LANCELOT: English bishop; b. at Barking (7 m. e. of London) 1555; d. at Winchester House, Southwark, Sept. 26, 1626. He entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1571, was graduated B.A. 1575, was ordained 1580, and became catechist at Pembroke; he was master of Pembroke from 1589 to 1605. He also held the living of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, and was prebendary of St. Paul’s; he became chaplain to the queen and dean of Westminster in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign. Under James I. he was made bishop of Chichester in 1605, of Ely in 1609, and of Winchester in 1619. He was a man of austere piety, rigorous in the performance of private devotion, liberal in charities, one of the most learned men of his time, and enjoys a well-deserved reputation as prelate, as preacher, and as writer. He was thought by many to be the natural successor to Bancroft as archbishop of Canterbury in 1611; but George Abbot was appointed instead. Andrewes was a member of the Hampton Court Conference, and his name heads the list of scholars appointed in 1607 to prepare the Authorized Version; he belonged to the first company of translators, to whom were assigned the books of the Old Testament as far as II Kings.

The only writings of Bishop Andrewes published during his life were the Tortura Torti sive ad Matthæi Torti responsio (1609) and one or two subsequent treatises, all written in reply to Cardinal Bellarmine, who had attacked King James because of the oath of allegiance imposed upon Roman Catholics in England after the Gunpowder Plot. In 1629 ninety-six of his sermons were published, edited by Bishops Buckeridge and Laud; certain sermons have been many times reedited and reprinted. A number of volumes based upon his works (such as The Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine, or an Exposition of the Ten Commandments, 1642) pass under his name. His prayers, composed in Greek and Latin for his own use, are famous, and have been often translated (cf. The Greek Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes, from the manuscript given by him to William Laud and recently discovered, ed. P. G. Medd, London, 1892; The Devotions of Bishop Andrewes, Græce et Latine, ed. H. Veale, 1895; The Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes, ed. E. Venables, 1883).

Bibliography: His works, with his life by H. Isaacson (first published 1650) and other notices, are collected in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, 11 vols., Oxford, 1841-54. There are many later memoirs and essays, as: A. T. Russell, Memoirs of the Life and Works of L. Andrewes, London, 1863; St. James’s Lectures, 2d ser., Lecture 3, ib. 1876; DNB, i. 401-405; R. L. Ottley, Lancelot Andrewes, ib. 1894; A. Whyte, Lancelot Andrews and his Private Devotions, Edinburgh, 1896.