cons. 10 May 1663 bp. of PETERBOROUGH
First sat 1 June 1663; last sat 7 Mar. 1679
b. 1603, 2nd s. of Thomas Henshaw‡ of Basset’s Fee, Shipley, Suss., solicitor gen. [I], and Joan, da. of Richard Wistow, chief surgeon to Elizabeth I. educ. Charterhouse 1614; Magdalen Hall, Oxf. matric 1621, BA 1625; Pembroke, Camb. MA 1628, BD 1635, DD 1639. m. 28 Apr. 1633, Jane (d.1639), da. of John May of Rawmarsh, Suss. 1s. (d.v.p.), 1da. d. 9 Mar. 1679; will 8 Sept. 1675, pr. 11 Mar. 1676.1
Chap. to Charles II 1660.
Chap. to John Digby†, earl of Bristol bef. 1628; chap. to George Villiers†, duke of Buckingham bef. 1628; preb. Chichester 1628–63; residentiary canon, Chichester 1638–60; vic. St Bartholomew-the-Less London 1631–6; rect. Stedham with Hayshot, Suss. 1634–63, E. Lavant, Suss. 1636–63; seq. 1645; dean and precentor, Chichester 1660–3.
Joseph Henshaw was born into the Sussex branch of an armigerous family originally from Cheshire and had enviable connections to both the early Stuart court and the London legal and mercantile communities.2 Originally under the patronage of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, Henshaw’s career survived the duke’s assassination, almost certainly because he had a friend at court in Buckingham’s sworn enemy, the diplomat Francis Cottington†, Baron Cottington, to whose wealthy but melancholic wife Henshaw dedicated his successful book of meditations, Horae Succisivae.3 He gained further connections within the establishment when he married into the May family of Sussex. By the end of his career, he had property in Nottinghamshire, London, and the estates of Shipley, Netherfield, and Shotford in his native county.4
Widowed in 1639, and ejected from his living in 1645 (compounding for £177), Henshaw devoted his time to study and publication.5 During the interregnum he lived in Chiswick and was one of a group of Anglican clerics at the heart of London society.6 The diarist John Evelyn commended him as one of several ‘firm confessors and excellent persons’, and Henshaw’s name was included on planning lists for the Church drawn up by Edward Hyde, the future earl of Clarendon.7
In 1663, Henshaw was elevated to the episcopate. His new diocese of Peterborough (centred on a city whose complex and archaic forms of local government blurred jurisdictional boundaries) included Northamptonshire, a notorious centre of nonconformity. This promotion proved to be something of a mixed blessing. The diocese was a poor one: in 1670 Henshaw stated that it produced an income of about £600 p.a. plus fines that had never yet exceeded £450. Set against this were ‘the great charges of coming into a bishopric’ and the lifestyle that had to be maintained – the ‘servants and attendants; the hospitality they must keep’. Over and above this it was unreasonable to ‘expect that we should lay up nothing, the estates being but during life, but reason and Christian religion do require us to provide for our family, not live splendidly and leave their relations to necessity and contempt’.8 Furthermore, Henshaw soon discovered that managing the diocese was no easy task. Its politics were complex and he found himself having to deal with some difficult local characters including his archdeacon John Palmer, a kinsman and friend of the staunch Anglican Sir Henry Yelverton‡.9 Yelverton was an enemy to Dissent and, as would soon transpire, to Henshaw too.
On 9 Apr. 1663 Henshaw took his seat in the House, beginning an active parliamentary career that spanned 16 years. He attended all but one of the 16 parliamentary sessions held during his episcopate, usually attending for at least half of the sittings and, in eight sessions, for more than 70 per cent of the time (1664–5, 1667–73, 1675, and 1677–8). With his fellow bishops, he attended on 10 July 1663 when George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, accused Clarendon of treason, but there is no evidence to suggest how he voted.
Henshaw was present on the first day of the new session on 16 Mar. 1664 and attended for 95 per cent of sittings, being particularly diligent throughout the passage of the first Conventicle bill. Although there is no available evidence that he actually served on select committees, his committee nominations began to take on a pattern that lasted for the remainder of his career in the House: the overwhelming majority related to private and economic bills, as well as to those dealing with the social and economic infrastructure of London, where he probably owned property. During the two sessions that ran from March 1664 to March 1665 he attended each for nearly three-quarters of all sittings. Between sessions, in June 1665, Henshaw faced accusations from Yelverton of ‘extreme negligence’. Perceiving himself as something of a lone crusader against Dissent in Northampton, where he had only recently prevented the expulsion of ‘the loyal party’ from the corporation, Yelverton insisted that the bishop was insufficiently active in repressing both nonconformity and sedition. The gulf between their differing perceptions of what it was either desirable or possible to achieve was never bridged.10
Henshaw joined the Oxford Parliament on 16 Oct. 1665. On 21 Oct. he received the proxy of William Lucy, of St Davids, (vacated at the end of the session). He attended the House throughout heated debates on the Five Mile bill. Although Parliament was prorogued in October, Henshaw remained with the court in Oxford and on 31 Dec. 1665 helped to consecrate Alexander Hyde, as bishop of Salisbury, in New College chapel. During that month he was outraged that Yelverton had gone behind his back in an attempt to secure the post of registrar for a relative. It was all the worse because because Yelverton had approached Archdeacon Palmer for help and, as Henshaw pointed out, ‘I did think I had deserved better of both’.11
Henshaw remained in his diocese throughout the summer of 1666 and did not attend the winter session of Parliament, being excused attendance at a call of the House on 1 October. Whether his absence was due to ill health is unclear. It may have been a tactical withdrawal, linked to the complaint in the House made by Edward Watson, 2nd Baron Rockingham, on 26 Nov. of a breach of privilege relating to a process in the ecclesiastical court by Henshaw’s commissary, Dr George Wake.
Although Henshaw dismissed Yelverton’s frequent accusations that he was both inefficient and colluded with ‘sectaries’, it is probable that he did exercise latitude with conscience-troubled nonconformists. In November 1666, Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury, remonstrated with Henshaw about his inaction in the case of a minister in his diocese, a Mr Hart, who
reads not the common prayer as he is enjoined but in parts and parcels acc[ording] as the present humour takes him, never wears the surplice, takes no notice of holy days or fasting days, discourages those that like to observe the prayers and ceremonies of the Church, and openly and frequently falls into disputes v. them. I am suffic[iently] convinced of the naughtiness of the man, and so may y[ou]r L[ordshi]p. if you will but make an effectual enquiry into him. To the rest of his faults, I believe you will find him rich and stubborn, and therefore the fitter to be made an example. 12
Sheldon went on to explain the procedure to be followed to deprive the minister of his living, concluding that ‘Such a justice as this thoroughly done upon such a person will give y[ou]r L[ordshi]p. much quiet in your diocese and ease me of the trouble of the like complaints’. Two weeks later he entreated Henshaw to make ‘him conformable, or his place too hot for him’ although it seems likely that Henshaw had pointed out that at least some of Hart’s more serious faults might have been pardoned by the Act of Oblivion.13
Henshaw planned a diocesan visitation for May 1667. In so doing, he fell into a dispute with Archdeacon Palmer, who continued to hold his court in contempt of the bishop’s authority. Henshaw also found himself having to pacify Bristol over a quarrel between Palmer and Bristol’s kinsman, George Wake, about their respective authorities. Bristol was threatening to take the matter to the king because Wake was a royal appointee who had been appointed as recompense for his sufferings and service. Henshaw advised Palmer to heal the rift.14
Henshaw appeared in the House on the second day of the October 1667 session and attended 70 per cent of sittings. On 24 Oct. he was named to the committee on sale of offices and on 8 Nov. to the committee on wool manufacture, both of which he chaired later in the month.15 A string of committee nominations followed. He was present on 20 Nov. for the impeachment of Clarendon and voted with the majority of the bishops to support the lord chancellor. No evidence has yet emerged of his attitude towards the specific comprehension projects in 1668 and 1669.
In April 1669 Henslow became involved in yet another dispute with Yelverton over the employment of a schoolmaster in Wellingborough of whom Yelverton strongly disapproved. Yelverton considered the appointment to be a deliberate affront by a bishop who had nothing but animosity for him. He insisted that the schoolmaster in question was so ignorant that he hadn’t heard of Demosthenes ‘and did not know a noun in Greek from a participle’, and that the dispute was ‘merely carried on in a fanatic fury’. The bishop, he insisted, was too lenient to nonconformists and allowed ministers to flout the Act of Uniformity. Henshaw’s defence was a simple one: the schoolmaster in question had renounced the covenant and conformed, and – in what was clearly an attempt to head off any potential opposition from Yelverton – Henshaw had had the man questioned about conventicle attendance by Palmer, Yelverton’s ‘great friend and favourite’. Henshaw’s difficulty, as he told Sheldon was that ‘Our business is to bring over as many of these N[on]C[onformist]s to the C[hurch] of E[ngland] as we can, but if after they have renounced their N[on]C[onform]ity they shall be discountenanced because they were once N[on]C[onformist]s, it will very much discourage others’. Henshaw probably made things worse by suggesting that Yelverton take a lead from John Cecil, 4th earl of Exeter, by using his secular authority to quash conventicles kept by two ejected ministers. Despite all attempts at moderate language, Henshaw could not in the end resist pointing out that ‘if I am not as fit to license a schoolmaster as a country justice, I am not fit to be b[isho]p’.16 Contemporaneously with the dispute over the schoolmaster, Henshaw’s prosecution of the offending minister, Mr Hart, finally came to fruition. The bishop had employed an able and experienced proctor to undertake the case but just as sentence was to be delivered the case was stopped by an inhibition from the court of arches.17
In October 1669 the see of Chichester fell vacant; Yelverton wrote with some satisfaction that Henshaw would not be considered for it, alleging that he had upset the gentry there during his short tenure as dean. When the two men met in November Yelverton took pleasure in deliberately slighting the bishop by remaining seated, as if in the presence of a social inferior.18 He also took the opportunity of repeating the rumour that Henshaw was en route for Parliament to make a case for ‘sectaries’.19 Following the lapse of the first Conventicle Act during 1669, Henshaw issued citations for conventiclers to appear before him at Peterborough.20
Henshaw was delayed for the start of the Oct. 1669 parliamentary session; at the call of the House on 26 Oct. he was still travelling to London. He attended the session almost constantly (92 per cent of sittings) and was named to the subcommittee to consider a report from the commissioners of accounts. On 7 Feb. 1670 he received the proxy of William Piers, of Bath and Wells (vacated at the end of the session). In the session that began a week later, Henshaw was named to some 50 select committees and was present on 15 Mar. when the House went into committee on the second Conventicle bill. On 17 Mar. 1670 he protested against the second reading of the divorce bill for John Manners, Lord Roos (later 9th earl and duke of Rutland), and entered a dissent to its passage on 28 March.
While Yelverton may have thought Henshaw too lenient, the Quakers of Northamptonshire held the opposite view. They reported that, in or about April 1670, after the adjournment, Henshaw returned to his diocese and spoke,
openly in the Mass-house, after he had given every officer a charge to put the late Act in execution, that when they met again (meaning the Parliament) they would make a stronger for them, they would get a law made to take away their lands and goods and then they should be sold for bond-slaves.21
Virtually nothing is yet known about Henshaw’s activities over the next few years, though in January 1672 he did supply information to Sheldon’s secretary about a dispute between the cathedral and Chichester corporation, in which he had presumably been involved as dean. The information was to be used to ‘guide’ the chapter of Gloucester in a similar dispute with its corporation.22
Henshaw arrived at the House one week into the February 1673 session and attended for 81 per cent of sittings. He was named to 15 committees including, on 24 Mar. 1673, the committee on parliamentary representation for the county palatine of Durham. In the brief session the following spring he was absent on 19 Feb. 1674 when a small group of bishops spoke in favour of the bill for composing differences in religion, which would have allowed some relaxation in liturgical dress and practice.
Henshaw signed the 1675 episcopal address to the king which advised that existing laws against Roman Catholics were sufficient and required only a royal command to put them into execution.23 During the spring 1675 session (when he attended for 83 per cent of sittings), he maintained episcopal solidarity in the alliance between the Church and Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, supporting proposals for Danby’s non-resisting test. He resumed his seat in the session that began on 13 Apr. 1675, attending for more than 80 per cent of sittings, and he was present throughout early May when his relative Sir John Fagg‡ appealed to the House in his case against Thomas Sherley.
Henshaw arrived on the first day of the session in Feb. 1677, attending for 72 per cent of sittings and being named to some 59 committees. On 29 Jan. 1678 he joined James Stuart, duke of York, and five other bishops to protest against the release of Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke. As a former dean of Chichester he was asked to comment on the dispute between the current dean, George Stradling, and Ralph Brideoake, the bishop. Henshaw’s sympathies seem to have been with Stradling, his somewhat terse remark that ‘it was a thing I never did, nor ever heard done’ presumably amounting to a comment on Brideoake’s actions.24
In the session beginning 21 Oct. 1678 (when Henshaw’s attendance slumped to some 25 per cent of sittings), he was absent for almost all the debates on the Test Act, being present only for those on 14 and 15 November. On 27 Dec. 1678 he voted against the motion to commit Danby. The previous day he had voted against the Lords’ amendment to the disbanding bill relating to the payment of money into the exchequer. He was back at Westminster on 6 Mar. 1679 for the start of the first Exclusion Parliament but his attendance the following day proved to be his last. Two days later Henshaw was seen at morning prayers in Westminster Abbey, but he died suddenly that night at his lodgings in Covent Garden. His only son had died three years earlier so he directed his estate to be split between his granddaughter and his nephew; he also left monetary bequests amounting to nearly £1,000. He was buried in the parish church of East Lavant, Chichester, near to his wife and son.
B.A.- 1 TNA, PROB 11/361.
- 2 Wood, Athen. Ox. iii. 1195; VCH Suss. iv. 213, ix. 107.
- 3 J. Henshaw, Horae Succisivae (2nd edn. 1631).
- 4 PROB 11/361; VCH Suss. iv. 213, ix. 107.
- 5 Walker Revised, 357.
- 6 Lansd. 986, f. 139.
- 7 Evelyn Diary, iii. 237 and n. 8; Eg. 2542, f. 267.
- 8 Bodl. Tanner, 147, f. 56.
- 9 Add. 22576, ff. 3–107.
- 10 Bodl. Add. C 302, f. 221; HP Commons, 1660–90, iii. 786.
- 11 Add. 22576, f. 31.
- 12 Bodl. Add. C 308, f. 76.
- 13 Bodl. Add. C 308 f. 79v.
- 14 Add. 22576, ff. 89, 91, 93, 105; Walker Revised, 286.
- 15 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, 209.
- 16 Bodl. Add. C 302, ff. 206, 211, 213-14.
- 17 Bodl. Add. C 305, f. 303.
- 18 Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c.210, ff. 109, 113.
- 19 Bodl. Add. C 302, f. 219v.
- 20 CSP Dom. 1668–9, p. 481.
- 21 Besse, Sufferings of the Quakers (1753), i. 537.
- 22 Bodl. Add. C 305, f. 74.
- 23 CSP Dom. 1673–5, p. 549.
- 24 Tanner 149, f. 81.