HUMPHREYS, Humphrey (1648-1712)

HUMPHREYS, Humphrey (1648–1712)

cons. 30 June 1689 bp. of BANGOR; transl. 2 Dec. 1701 bp. of HEREFORD

First sat 12 July 1689; last sat 5 Mar. 1706

b. 24 Nov. 1648, 1st s. of Richard Humphreys of Llanihangel, Merion. and Margaret, da. of Robert Wynne of Cesail Gyfarch, Caern. educ. Oswestry free sch. Salop.; Bangor free sch. (Friars sch.), Caern.; Jesus, Oxf. matric. 16 Feb. 1666, BA 1669, MA 1672, Fell. 1673, BD 1679, DD 1682; m. April 1681 Elizabeth (d. bef. Dec. 1700), da. of Robert Morgan, bp. of Bangor; 2da. (1 d.v.p.), d. 20 Nov. 1712; 1 will intestate, admon. 6 Dec. 1712, to da. Margaret Lloyd.2

Rect. Llanfrothen, Merion. 1670, Trawsfynydd, Merion. 1672, Criccieth als Merthir, Caern. 1677, Llaniestyn, Caern. 1680-d., Eastyn als Queenhope, Flint 1685-d.; chap., Humphrey Lloyd, bp. of Bangor 1673; prebend, Bangor 1677; dean, Bangor 1680-89.3

Mbr. SPCK 1699; SPG 1701.4

Also associated with: Hendre Isa, Penrhyndeudraeth, Merion.5

Likenesses: oil on canvas by unknown artist, c.1690, Gwynedd Museum and Art Gallery.

Dean and Bishop of Bangor, 1689-1701

Humphreys, the son of a royalist army officer, was descended from an old Caernarvonshire family. After an education at Jesus College, Oxford, and a number of cures in Merionethshire, by 1673 Humphreys was serving as household chaplain to Humphrey Lloyd, bishop of Bangor. He had also been close to Lloyd’s predecessor, Bishop Morgan, whose daughter he married in 1681. By 1675 he had further befriended the dean of Bangor, William Lloyd, future bishop of St Asaph, who hand-picked Humphreys as his replacement as dean when he was elevated to the episcopal bench. Humphreys was favoured by the custos rotulorum of Caernarvonshire, and its leading landowner, Richard Bulkeley‡, 3rd Viscount Bulkeley of Cashel [I], who personally thanked Lloyd for securing Humphreys’s appointment.6 As dean of Bangor Humphreys over-hauled and methodized diocesan administration, as well as delving into the archives to compile a history of the bishops and deans of the Welsh diocese. Presumably, he helped to promote the bill, introduced into the House of Lords on 22 June 1685, which redirected a number of tithes from the sinecure of Llandinam to form a permanent endowment for the repair of the cathedral and an augmentation of episcopal revenue and which received the royal assent on 2 July 1685.7 By 1686 Lloyd of St Aspah was recommending Humphreys to William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, as the best candidate to replace the ailing Lloyd of Bangor, describing Humphreys as ‘a singular good man, and of all other best knows the diocese, and would be the most acceptable of all men to the clergy and people that live in it’.8

When the elderly Bishop Lloyd died on 18 Jan. 1689, Humphreys could not have been better placed to succeed him, as he himself subtly made clear to Sancroft in his letter informing him of the bishop’s death.9 He was nominated bishop of Bangor on 24 May 1689 and four days later vacated his deanery. On 28 June 1689 Humphreys was granted two Welsh rectories in commendam with the bishopric, in order to increase its paltry revenue, and two days later he was consecrated as bishop at Fulham Palace.10 His response in September 1689 to a query about the extent of his personal estate was oblique. He claimed that his personal estate had been ‘worth something’ earlier in the year, before the expenses of his translation to the see of Hereford had reduced it ‘to nothing’ and that he also possessed ‘some estate of inheritance beside… church preferment, but… real not personal’.11 He was one of the last Welsh bishops of Bangor diocese before a number of English appointments under the Hanoverians, and throughout his tenure he promoted the Welsh language, as well as Welsh literature and poetry, historical studies and antiquarianism.12 As one might expect of a protégé and colleague of Lloyd of St Asaph, Humphreys quickly distinguished himself as a supporter of the new Williamite regime and an opponent of the measures of the previous king. Even before his formal appointment as bishop, he had tried to block the election to the Convention Parliament for Beaumaris of Sir William Williams‡, bt., solicitor-general under James II and the prosecutor of the seven bishops. Humphreys proposed instead the local attorney Owen Hughes‡ but Williams was elected on the Bulkeley interest when the franchise was extended to include the ‘common burgesses’.13 As was usually the case, any ‘cathedral’ influence Humphreys may have wished to exercise in elections in this region was outstripped by the interest of the predominant high Tory Bulkeley family, leading landowners of the region.

On 12 July 1689 Humphreys first took his seat in the Convention. His parliamentary career was sporadic and of the 26 sessions that he could have attended during his bishopric, he was present at only 12. He did not attend the House at all after 5 Mar. 1706. In his first parliamentary session of 1689, Humphreys, with his late arrival in the House, attended just under 20 per cent of the sittings and was named to ten committees on legislation. On 30 July he voted to adhere to the House’s punitive amendments to the bill to reverse the two judgments of perjury against Titus Oates. Humphreys attended that session for the last time on 20 Aug. 1689, when it was adjourned to 20 September. During this period of adjournment Humphreys was, on 13 Sept., named to the ecclesiastical commission to review and amend the Anglican liturgy, in view of shaping a bill for comprehending moderate Dissenters within the Church. 14 The meetings of the commission commenced on 10 Oct and on 28 Oct., five days into the second session of the Convention, his absence was excused at a call of the House, possibly on account of his duties on the commission. Humphreys was present at a meeting of the commission on 1 Nov. for discussions on the prayer book and Athanasian Creed and he first sat in the House for that session the following day. 15 He attended for 66 per cent of sittings and was named to 12 committees on legislation including that on the small tithes bill, to which he was added on 9 Nov. 1689. On that day he received the proxy of Thomas Smith, bishop of Carlisle, which Humphreys was able to exercise until he himself left the House on 24 Jan. 1690, three days before the prorogation. 

Following the dissolution of the Convention on 6 Feb. 1690, Humphreys was in the House on 20 Mar. 1690 for the first day of the new Parliament. He attended one-third of the sittings and was named to five committees on legislation. On 26 Mar. a bill was introduced to make the chapel of Worthenbury a distinct church from the parish church of Bangor. Humphreys was not in the House for either its first or second reading and consequently was not placed on its committee. The bill, however, passed through both houses easily and received the royal assent on 14 April. On 10 Apr. he signed the protest against the resolution to expunge from the Journal the reasons for the protest of two days previously against wording in the bill to recognize William and Mary as king and queen. Humphreys was marked as present on the day of the earlier protest, but his name does not appear among its signatories in the Journal, although he was listed among the protesters by a contemporary newsletter writer.16 The reasons for the protest of 10 Apr. affirmed the right of the lords in Parliament to protest its decisions without recrimination. He last sat in the House for that session on 21 Apr. and registered his proxy with Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, a week later.

Humphreys set a precedent by conducting his primary visitation in the summer of 1690 entirely in the Welsh language. The visitation articles emphasized the recovery of Dissenters and Catholics despite the fact that nonconformity does not appear to have been a problem in the diocese at that point.17 He did not attend the session of 1690-1: on 1 Oct. 1690, the day before its first meeting, registered his proxy with Lloyd of St Asaph. Nor did Humphreys attend the following session of 1691-2. On 2 Nov. 1691 he was excused attendance at a call of the House but he does not appear to have registered a proxy for the session. He did however arrive in the House on 14 Nov. 1692, ten days into the session of 1692-3. He attended just over three-quarters of the sittings and was named to 30 committees on legislation. He voted on 31 Dec. 1692 against the committal of the place bill and on 3 Jan. 1693 against its passage. The previous day, he had voted to read the bill for the divorce of the Protestant Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, from his Catholic wife. On 18 Jan. he reported from committee that the bill to enable Roger Price to sell some of his estate to provide for portions was fit to pass with amendments. One week later Humphreys voted against committing the bill to prevent dangers from persons disaffected to their majesties’ government. Humphreys was present on 24 Jan. for the first reading of a bill to allow him to lease Bangor House in the parish of St Andrew’s, Holborn, and two days later he was named to the bill committee. The bill was dealt with quickly and four days later Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, reported from it with the completed bill. Humphreys was again present on 14 Mar. 1693 when the bill received the royal assent.

Humphreys registered his proxy with Edward Jones, bishop of St Asaph, on 24 Oct. 1693 for the session of 1693-4, none of whose sittings he attended. The proxy was noted when Humphrey’s was excused attendance at a call of the House on 14 Nov. 1693. Humphreys was back at Westminster in time for the first day of the following session, 12 Nov. 1694. He attended 43 per cent of sittings and was named to 17 select committees. On 16 Jan. 1695 Humphreys took part in the confirmation ceremony, at St Mary-le-Bow, of Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury.18 He attended the session for the last time on 9 Mar., missing the last two months of parliamentary business.

Humphreys arrived at the House on 19 Dec. 1695, one month into the new Parliament’s first session. He attended 44 per cent of sittings and was named to 21 committees on legislation. On 1 Jan. 1696 he was ordered to preach at the end of the month to commemorate the martyrdom of Charles I, and the day after he received the customary thanks of the House and was ordered to publish his sermon. He signed the Association on 27 Feb. and last sat on 12 Mar. 1696. Humphreys did not return to the House promptly for the next session and on 14 Nov. 1696 the House ordered his attendance by 7 Dec. to take part in the proceedings against Sir John Fenwick‡, 3rd bt. On 23 Nov. the House read a letter from Humphreys asking to be excused attendance and he was given a week longer to appear. He duly appeared on 14 Dec. and likewise came to the House the following day, but on 16 Dec. the House once again gave him dispensation from attending the House, he ‘being indisposed’. He sat on 17 Dec. and then absented himself for several weeks, possibly to avoid involvement in the bill for Fenwick’s attainder: he last sat the day before the vote to commit the bill, and he returned to the House on 8 Jan. 1697, the day after those opposed to the bill were allowed to sign the protest against its passage. From that point for the next month he attended the House more consistently, but he still only managed to come to just under a fifth of the sittings of that session, during which he was named to nine committees on legislation. On 1 Feb. he was granted permission to leave the House ‘for the recovery of his health’, but he continued to attend until 10 Feb. and on 19 Feb. registered his proxy with Archbishop Tenison. Diocesan business may have been what kept the obviously ailing Humphreys in Westminster during these winter weeks. At this point he was involved in a complex dispute about the proper recipient of the tithes for the sinecure of Llandinam on Montgomeryshire, which was disputed by the lay patron of the parish on behalf of the parish’s curate John Spademan. Throughout January and February 1697, Humphreys was in frequent contact with the under-secretary John Ellis‡ about the progress of the bill for re-investing the Llandinam in John Spademan in trust for Joseph Hill, which passed the Commons on 8 Mar. 1697.19 On 12 Mar., while Humphreys himself was absent, a petition from the dean and chapter of Bangor succeeded in getting the bill rejected at its first reading in the House on the grounds that it disinherited them and defeated the aims of the charities for which they were trustees.20 In late July 1697, Humphreys was part of the commission that was deputed by Archbishop Tenison to hear the complaints of the diocesan clergy against Bishop Jones of St Asaph. It also included Bishop Lloyd of Lichfield and the dean of the Arches Edward Oxenden. Proceedings against Jones were long and drawn-out and he was not suspended by the archbishop until June 1701.21 In the meantime, having submitted his report on Jones’s misdeeds, on 29 Nov. 1697 Humphreys registered his proxy with John Williams, bishop of Chichester, for the 1697-8 session, none of whose sittings he attended. 

Following the dissolution of July 1698, the whig Owen Hughes, whom Humphreys had supported in 1689, was elected for Beaumaris in opposition to the Bulkeley interest. Humphreys first sat in the House in the new Parliament on 23 Feb. 1699 and overall attended 42 per cent of sittings, and was named to ten committees on legislation. On 16 Mar. he was ordered to preach on 5 April. On 25 Apr he was named to the committee to draw up reasons why the House insisted on a proviso in the bill concerning Billingsgate market and then to manage the ensuing conference on the 27th. Humphreys remained in attendance on the House until the last day of the session, 4 May 1699.

Back in his diocese that summer, Humphreys circulated archbishop Tenison’s letter calling for the suppression of vice. From this point Humphreys became closely involved in the SPCK and actively sponsored its efforts to distribute devotional works written in the Welsh language.22 He did not attend the 1699-1700 parliamentary session. Following the dissolution in December 1700, Humphreys arrived in the House on 13 Feb. 1701, one week into the new Parliament’s proceedings. He attended 71 per cent of sittings and was named to 22 committees on legislation. Humphreys was drawn into the disputes in Convocation over the independence of the lower house, confronting the prolocutor, George Hooper, later bishop of St Asaph, and bishop of Bath and Wells, whom he was said to have accused of lying to him over the proceedings of a conference on 30 May, and had his accusation entered in the journal of the session, inflaming the dispute.23 On 17 June Humphreys voted in the Lords for the acquittal of John Somers, Baron Somers, from the impeachment charges brought against him by the Commons. He was present on 24 June for the prorogation and three days later attended at Lambeth the first meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, another proselytizing organization with which he became closely associated, encouraging educational works in Welsh.24

Bishop of Hereford, 1701-6

The death of Gilbert Ironside, bishop of Hereford on 27 Aug. 1701 immediately led to speculation on who would replace him, but it soon became clear that the lords justices governing during William’s absence on the continent preferred Humphreys. He was nominated on 1 Oct. and on the king’s return he gave his assent to Humphreys’ translation on 29 November. Humphreys formally entered into his new office on 2 Dec. 1701.25 Looking back from the vantage point of 1730, William Brome of Hereford, thought Humphreys ‘was translated to our see in a pretty advanced age, when infirmities were coming upon him; which meeting with a sanguine constitution made him not so conversable as in his younger days’. Nevertheless he treated his visitors to learned conversations on Welsh history.26 The appointment brought him firmly within the sphere of influence of Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford and the two corresponded for the rest of the bishop’s life. 

On 30 Dec. 1701 Humphreys was present on the first day of the new Parliament. He attended just over half of its sittings and was named to 15 committees on legislation. On 26 Feb. 1702 he joined the like-minded William Lloyd, now bishop of Worcester, and five other bishops in signing the protest against the passage of the bill to continue the Quaker Affirmation Act. On 8 Mar. 1702 Humphreys, along with the remainder of the House present that day, was appointed to manage the conference on the accession of Anne following the death of William III. He did not attend the House after 28 Apr. 1702. By 24 Sept. Humphreys was back in Hereford, where he wrote apologizing to Harley for not waiting on him at Brampton, adding that since his arrival he had been either too ill or too busy to have waited on anybody.27

Humphreys first attended the House for the new session on 31 Oct. 1702. He was present for a little over two-thirds of its sittings and was named to 21 committees on legislation, plus the committee appointed on 9 Nov. to draw up an address to the queen congratulating her on the recovery of Prince George, duke of Cumberland. Humphreys, however, seems to have divided his working days during 1702-3 between the Lords and Convocation, while the diaries of William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, reveal that the two bishops spent many evenings after the day’s business in each other’s company discussing their common antiquarian and linguistic interests. It has been calculated that Humphreys was Nicolson’s most frequent social associate during the 1702-3 session. On 28 Nov. the two bishops dined together at Lambeth together with John Evans, bishop of Bangor, for a discussion on occasional conformity. Humphreys was present for the second reading of the occasional conformity bill on 3 Dec., when it was committed to the whole House; in the division on Somers’s ‘wrecking’ amendment to restrict the scope of the bill to only those already covered by the 1673 Test Act, Humphreys voted for the amendment with along with Archbishop Tenison, Lloyd of Worcester and eight other mainly Whig bishops. On 9 Dec. he signed the resolution of the House against the ‘unparliamentary’ tacking of ‘foreign’ clauses to supply bills and when an adjournment of the House was moved on 17 Dec., Humphreys voted in support of it. On 20 Dec. he preached at St Botolph, Aldgate, a sermon which Nicolson considered ‘very good and pious’. Humphreys was back in the House on 29 Dec., when he reported from two committees on private estate bills: one regarding Edward Owen of Shropshire and the other, Thomas Lyster of Gloucester. On 13 Jan. 1703 he reported from a committee on the bill to allow Viscount Bulkeley to make a marriage settlement on his son Richard Bulkeley‡. On 16 Jan., following a heated conference with the Commons, Humphreys sided with the Whigs to vote to adhere to the amendment to the penalty clause in the occasional conformity bill, which was destined to scupper the measure in the lower House. Humphreys was subsequently absent from the House between 20 and 29 Jan., being ill with a cold, as recorded by his ‘good neighbour’ Nicolson in his entry for 21 January.28 After his return to the House at the end of January, Humphreys continued to attend reasonably regularly until the last day of the session on 27 Feb. 1703.

In these first months of 1703 Humphreys continued to associate with Nicolson, spending time with him after the commemoration of 30 Jan. and again at court on 6 Feb., the queen’s birthday. The attention of these two bishops, and their frequent episcopal companions, often turned to the theological and ecclesiological issues convulsing convocation. Tempers were high in that assembly as its lower house, under the impetus of Francis Atterbury, the future bishop of Rochester and Dr Henry Aldrich, dean of Christ Church, led a revolt against the authority of the archbishop and of the upper house in general. Humphreys did not neglect his duty in Convocation, in defending the rights and authority of the episcopal bench. On the evening of 7 Jan. 1703, Humphreys and Nicolson spent time editing the Commentary by Edmund Gibson†, the future bishop of London, on the controversy.29 The earlier attack by Humphreys on the prolocutor of the lower house in the Convocation of 1701 remained a sore subject for Atterbury, who agitated that Humphreys’ derogatory comments be erased from the Convocation journals. Tenison, speaking to Convocation in a ‘higher tone than ever’, informed the highfliers that nothing could be expunged from the account of an earlier synod and that Humphreys’s attack must stand.30

Humphreys did not attend the 1703-4 session. At its start he was twice forecast by Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland to be an opponent of the occasional conformity bill, and on 14 Dec. Humphreys’s proxy was used to vote against the bill, according to the printed division list of the division. Unfortunately it cannot be determined with whom Humphreys had entrusted his proxy, but it was presumably from among the ranks of the 11 bishops voting against the bill in person, including Archbishop Tenison, Lloyd of Worcester and Evans of Bangor. Despite Humphreys’s absence from the House for the entire session, newsletters of 20 Jan. 1704 nevertheless reported that he and Edward Fowler, bishop of Gloucester, had tabled a successful motion that day that the House thank the queen for suppressing ‘lewdness and irreligion’ and other ‘irregularities’ on the stage.31

Humphreys seems to have been engaged at this time in visitation business, and also spent some time in Wales. He was in Hereford in March 1704, but on 8 May he responded to a letter from Harley which had been sent on to him in Caernarvonshire ‘where I was then so indisposed that I was not in a capacity to acknowledge it.’ He had returned to Hereford the previous week, having not seen a newsletter for seven weeks, and so had been unaware of the delay in the delivery of a diocesan address of thanks to the queen for her ‘great bounty’ to the clergy.32 When Harley was named secretary of state, Humphreys was prompt in sending his congratulations on 22 May, knowing it to be ‘a laborious and difficult station, having spent some time in a secretary of state’s family in a very difficult time also’: the reference here is obscure.33 Humphrey’s chaplain, Roger Griffith, who had spent nine or ten weeks with the bishop in north Wales, wrote to Harley at about the same time, bemoaning the bishop’s small reserves of patronage, and seeking Harley’s support instead. He also noted that the bishop intended to travel to Whitbourne ‘and from thence towards the latter end of summer comes to London.’34 Humphreys acknowledged Harley’s patronage for Griffiths on 13 Sept. when writing from Hereford; he also noted that ‘your brother, Edward Harley‡ and his family were all well last Saturday when I dined at his house’.35 Contray to Griffith’s expectation, Humphreys did not move to London, and remained at Whitbourne Court, the manor house of the bishops of Hereford, throughout the 1704-5 session. On 27 Oct. 1704, three days into the session, his proxy with archbishop Tenison was registered and on 23 Nov. the bishop’s absence was excused at a call of the House. Nicolson recorded in his diary on 22 Dec. 1704 that Archbishop Tenison ‘wants assistants among the bishops of his province, since the bishop of Hereford keeps at home’.36

The involvement of Bishop Humphreys in the elections in Herefordshire appears to have been minimal, no doubt affected by the powerful electoral interests of the Harleys, the Foleys, the Brydges, the Gorges and other Marcher landowners. Humphreys attended the opening day of the new Parliament on 25 Oct. 1705, was present for two-thirds of the sittings of its first session, and was named to 27 committees on legislation. He also sat in Convocation during this session. Both assemblies were convulsed in December 1705 by the proposition from the high Church Tories that the ‘Church was in danger’ under the queen’s administration. On 1 Dec. 1705, he was appointed to a committee of the upper house of Convocation, together with William Wake, bishop of Lincoln, John Hough, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry and John Moore, bishop of Norwich, to consider how to respond to the address to the queen concerning this putative ‘danger’ to the Church.37 After the sitting of the House of Lords two days later, Humphreys, Nicolson and Burnet dined with Tenison where they resolved that each bishop should speak of the state of his own diocese in the imminent debate on the question.38 According to the Journal Humphreys was in the House for this debate on 6 Dec. 1705 later, but his name is omitted from the incomplete list of the division on the motion that ‘the Church was not in danger under the queen’s administration’ drawn up by Charles Bruce, Lord Bruce, the future 3rd earl of Ailesbury. Judging by his companions in both the convocation committee and at Tenison’s dinner, all of whom voted in favour of the motion, it is most likely that Humphreys also voted that the Church was not in danger.39

Throughout the 1705-6 session Humphreys and Nicolson resumed their frequent dinners and antiquarian and linguistic consultations which had been interrupted by the former’s absence from the capital during the previous two sessions. At the same time they continued their involvement in some of the key issues convulsing Parliament that session. Bumping into Nicolson on 27 Jan. 1706 in the vestry of St James’s, Humphreys expressed his hope that the two Houses could ‘easily adjust’ their differences over the place clause to the regency bill (or Hanover Bill, as Nicolson termed it). This did not happen, although a compromise was eventually reached between the Junto promoting the bill and a section of the country Whigs, which eventually helped to lead to the passage of the Regency Act. In committee of the whole House on 23 Feb. 1706 on the bill to allow William King, archbishop of Dublin, to be restored to previously forfeited lands in Ireland resumed by the parliamentary commissioners, Humphreys joined all of the bishops, except for Burnet, in voting in favour of retaining the clause which would provide for King to be refunded the money he had originally paid William III’s trustees of forfeited Irish lands. Humphreys vote was crucial, as the motion to retain the refunding clause passed by a majority of only two. At the resumption of the House Humphreys voted in favour of the motion to read the bill a third time in two days’ time, rather than immediately. In this he sided with Nicolson, Rochester, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend and Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, and apparently against Archbishop Tension (although Nicolson’s phrasing is difficult to interpret precisely), in another close division in which the contents prevailed by a scant majority of three.40 Humphreys continued to attend the House until 5 Mar. 1706, two weeks before its prorogation, his last attendance in the House.

In retirement from the House, 1706-12

Humphreys remained in London until the end of the March 1706 and returned to Whitbourne on 5 Apr. 1706 where he quickly got stuck into diocesan business.41 Humphrey’s dean John Tyler, was made bishop of Llandaff on 30 June 1706, although he remained dean of Hereford in commendam, and as the following session of 1706-7 approached he turned to Humphreys for advice and assistance in dealing with his new responsibilities in the House. In the event, Tyler took Humphreys’ blank proxy to Westminster with him when he travelled up to the capital in late October. Tyler then warned Humphreys that he would almost certainly be summoned to London for debates on the Union, but was sure that the ‘circumstances’ of Humphreys’s ‘only and dear daughter’ and his proxy would be enough to excuse him from attendance.42 Humphreys’ proxy was registered with Archbishop Tenison on 2 Dec. 1706, the day before the session was set to start for business. At about this time Humphreys felt the necessity of explaining his absence (due to illness), both to Harley by letter, and to Tenison via Bishop Evans of Bangor.43 Humphreys also relied on Evans for news of proceedings in Parliament, such as the bill for the security of the Church of England attendant on the Union with Scotland.44

In April 1707 Humphreys, at the suggestion of Gibson and Sir John Philipps‡, a Welsh evangelical philanthropist, undertook to sponsor a new edition of the Welsh Book of Common Prayer. This project, which had had its origin in the council of the SPCK back in December 1705, was to occupy Humphreys for the next few months and to involve him in a long correspondence with Gibson. As the commencement of the 1707-8 session drew near, pressure mounted on Humphreys to attend the House. Gibson assumed that he would be there and Humphreys learned that both Tenison and the queen expected all bishops to attend. Only on 16 Oct. 1707, a week before the session was due to start, did Humphreys hear from Gibson that Tenison had acknowledged his request to be absent, though he still hoped that Humphreys’ illness would not hinder him ‘from appearing and making your proxy’. Gibson emphasized to Tenison the value of the service Humphreys was doing to the public, especially the Welsh-reading public, instead of his parliamentary attendance.45

At the end of May 1708, Humphreys apologized for not waiting on Harley, who had arrived in Herefordshire. Humphreys had been visiting Hartlebury and was now unable to leave Hereford as his coach had been used to send his daughter to Hammersmith. In September Humphreys seems to have been intending to attend Parliament in the autumn, for he wrote to Harley on the 11th that although ‘of late I have been confined’, and he was ‘now to enter on a course of physic for my fits which still trouble me’, he hoped ‘at least to wait on you early in London’, but in November he again explained his failure to wait on Harley at Brampton, after the latter’s return from Wales, because he was still ‘confined’ in Hereford. He solicited Harley’s assistance to get a living for another chaplain, Richard Langford. 4647 In the event, Humphreys did not attend the 1708 Parliament at all. At the verdict on Dr. Henry Sacheverell on 20 Mar. 1710 it was merely noted by one contemporary that Humphreys was away ‘in the country’. On an annotated printed list of the Lords with a record of their voting on Sacheverell, Humphreys was merely marked as a Whig. In early April 1710 Sunderland forwarded instructions for Humphreys to prosecute another ‘seditious’ Tory clergyman, a ‘Mr Cornwall’, minister of Ludlow, for his anti-government sermon. Humphreys, however, informed Sunderland on 12 Apr. that he was unwilling to discipline Cornwall in case he was unable to substantiate the charge and the prosecution failed, which would be a ‘triumph to his [Cornwall’s] party’.48

In August 1710 Humphreys, staying at the Welsh residence of Sir John Wynn‡, 5th bt, Member for Caernarvonshire, sent Harley congratulations on his promotion to the chancellorship of the exchequer and de facto leader of the ministry.49 Yet despite these good wishes and the two men’s long association, on a list drawn up on 3 Oct. 1710 Harley reckoned that Humphreys would be certain to oppose his new ministry. Humphreys did not attend any of the sessions of the Parliament elected in October 1710, but he was in the capital in the early months of 1711. During this visit, Humphreys confined his attention to Convocation. Bishop Wake recorded going to Lambeth in the company of Humphreys and John Moore, now bishop of Ely, on 25 Jan. 1711 and on 17 Mar., recorded a meeting of the committee, of which Humphreys was a member, dealing with the theological views of William Whiston.50 No House of Lords proxy was registered for Humphreys, presumably because the bishop had not taken his seat in the Lords during that Parliament. By the session’s end Humphreys was back in Hereford and on 7 July 1711 he wrote to Harley to congratulate him on his elevation to the peerage as earl of Oxford, to agree to collate to the vicarage of Wigmore the person recommended by Harley, even though he as bishop claimed the right to present to it, and to apologize for using a different hand as he had an indisposition in his own. During the next session, Humphreys wrote to Oxford on 26 Jan. 1712 excusing his continuing absence from the House, claiming that ‘in this great juncture of affairs’ he found himself ‘so far from a capacity to do any service to your lordship or the public’.51

Humphreys died at the episcopal residence of Whitbourne Court on 20 Nov. 1712. He died intestate and, his wife and one daughter having predeceased him, administration of his estate was given to his one surviving daughter Margaret, the widow of John Lloyd, son of the nonjuror William Lloyd, the former bishop of Norwich.52 He apparently had little financial benefit from his livings and it does appear that once he was bishop of Hereford, he struggled financially because of problems with poor harvests and rent arrears, and was forced to use ‘a little old gold’ for daily expenses.53 His greatest legacy was scholarly, and was more keenly felt in his native Wales than in the English diocese in which he died. He is remembered as a great patron of Welsh literature and poetry – Edward Lhuyd considered him a ‘greater master’ than himself in the language - and of Christian missionary works written in Welsh through the auspices of the SPCK. His extensive researches on the history and genealogy of the Welsh higher clergy were printed posthumously, most conspicuously as addenda to the edition published by Philip Bliss of Anthony Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses. In 1730 the antiquarian Thomas Hearne was especially busy searching out the bishop’s manuscripts from a number of sources, as he considered them highly and thought it would be a ‘crime to suppress them’.54 Despite these strong ties to Wales, Humphreys was buried on the north side of the altar in Hereford Cathedral where he is commemorated by a black marble slab.

B.A./C.G.D.L.

  • 1 Jnl. of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, ii. 72-73; A.H. Dodd, Hist. of Caern. 1284-1900, 216-17; Add. 41843, f. 9; Bodl. Willis 38, f. 561.
  • 2 TNA, PROB 6/88, f. 164v.
  • 3 Jnl. of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, ii. 72; Diocese of Bangor over three centuries ed. A.I. Pryce, 6-7, 9; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 49.
  • 4 Jnl.of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, ii. 75-79; CSP Dom. 1700-2, p. 35; M. Clement, The SPCK and Wales, pp. xv, 66-67.
  • 5 Jnl. of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, ii. 72-73.
  • 6 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/2/1, nos 24, 34.
  • 7 Diocese of Bangor over three centuries, pp. xl-xlii.
  • 8 Bodl. Tanner 31, f. 294.
  • 9 Tanner 28, f. 325.
  • 10 CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 118, 123, 154; Tanner 146, f. 64.
  • 11 Chatsworth, Halifax Coll. B.41.
  • 12 Jnl. of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, ii. 74, 79-82.
  • 13 NLW, Plas Gwyn 84; HP Commons 1660-90, i. 506, iii. 734.
  • 14 Carpenter, Tenison, 100-1; CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 262-3.
  • 15 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 235; Cardwell, 413-20.
  • 16 HEHL, HM 30659 (7), newsletter, 10 Apr. 1690.
  • 17 Jnl. of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, ii. 74; Dodd, Hist. of Caern. 216; CSP Dom. 1693, p. 449.
  • 18 Carpenter, Tenison, 132.
  • 19 NLW, Plas Gwyn, 87; Add. 72486, ff. 56, 67; Add. 28881, ff. 63, 80, 109, 118; Add. 4274, f. 42.
  • 20 HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 533.
  • 21 A Short Narrative of the proceedings against the Bp of St A. (1702).
  • 22 Jnl. of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, ii. 76-77; Hist. of the Church in Wales ed. D. Walker, 100; Clement, The SPCK and Wales, pp. xv, 66-67.
  • 23 W. Marshall, George Hooper, 77-9, 86; A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Lower House of Convocation (1701), 66-67.
  • 24 CSP Dom. 1700-2, p. 35.
  • 25 CSP Dom. 1700-2, pp. 427, 431, 450, 469; Add. 70075, newsletter, 29 Nov. 1701.
  • 26 Bodl. Rawl. Letters 3, f. 146.
  • 27 Add. 70243, Humphreys to R. Harley, 24 Sept. 1702.
  • 28 Nicolson, London Diaries, 19, 130, 133-8, 140, 145-6, 148-9, 152-8, 183.
  • 29 Nicolson, London Diaries, 192, 198, 160.
  • 30 Atterbury Epist. Corresp. iv. 364-6.
  • 31 Add. 70075, newsletter, 20 Jan. 1704; Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 45, f. 17.
  • 32 Add. 70243, Humphreys to Tyler, 22 Mar. 1703/4, same to Harley, 8 May 1704; Add. 70229, Griffith to Harley, 30 May 1704.
  • 33 HMC Portland, iv. 85.
  • 34 Add. 70198, Griffith to Harley, 6 May 1704.
  • 35 Add. 70243, Humphreys to Harley, 10 July, 13 Sept. 1704.
  • 36 Nicolson, London Diaries, 258.
  • 37 Sykes, Wake, i. 122-4.
  • 38 Nicolson, London Diaries, 316-17.
  • 39 PH, xxxii. 257.
  • 40 Nicolson, London Diaries, 329, 360-3, 379, 384.
  • 41 Add. 70243, Humphreys to Harley, 26 Mar. 1706; Add. 70023, ff. 98, 100-1; NLW, Plas-yn-Cefn, 2641.
  • 42 NLW, Plas-yn-Cefn, 2744-2747.
  • 43 Add. 70243, Humphreys to Harley, 7 Dec. 1706; NLW, Plas-yn-Cefn, 2773.
  • 44 NLW, Plas-yn-Cefn, 2709, 2772, 2778-2779.
  • 45 NLW, Plas-yn-Cefn, 2734-2740, 2749; NLW Jnl. x. 365.
  • 46 Add. 70224, Humphreys to Harley, 11 Sept. 1708.
  • 47 Add. 70243, Humphreys to Harley, 31 May, 17 Nov. 1708, 30 Apr. 1709.
  • 48 Add. 61610, ff. 30, 73; Add. 61652, f. 213; NLW, Plas-yn-Cefn, 2861-2863.
  • 49 Add. 70243, Humphreys to Harley, 18 Aug. 1710.
  • 50 LPL, ms 1770 (Wake diary), ff. 103v, 106.
  • 51 Add. 70243, Humphreys to Oxford, 7 July 1711, 26 Jan. 1712.
  • 52 PROB 6/88, f. 164v.
  • 53 Add. 41843, f. 20.
  • 54 Jnl. of the Hist. Soc. of the Church in Wales, ii. 76-85; Bodl. Rawl. Letters 3, f. 146; 15, f. 129; 22, ff. 27-28, 32, 37.