Henry King (poet)

Henry King (1592-1669). Portrait, 1641. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Bp. Henry King (baptized January 16, 1592 - 30 September 1669) was an English poet and churchman.

Life

Overview

King, son of a Bishop of London, was educated at Westminster School and Oxford. He entered the Church, and rose in 1642 to be Bishop of Chichester. The following year he was deprived, but was reinstated at the Restoration. He wrote many elegies on Royal persons and on his private friends, who included Donne and Ben Jonson. A selection from his Poems and Psalms was published in 1843.

Youth and education

King was the eldest son of John King, bishop of London, by his wife, Joan (Freeman), was baptized at Worminghall, Buckinghamshire, 16 Jan. 1591-2. Robert King, 1st bishop of Oxford, was his great-granduncle.

Henry was educated at Westminster School. In 1608 he was elected, along with his brother John, a student of Christ Church, Oxford. The brothers were matriculated 20 January 1608-9, and were admitted on the same days (19 June 1611 and 7 July 1614) to the degrees of bachelor and master of arts.

Early career

On 24 Jan. 1615-16 Henry was collated to the prebend of St. Pancras in the cathedral of St. Paul's, receiving at the same time the office of penitentiary or confessor in that cathedral, together with the rectory and patronage of Chigwell, Essex. He was made archdeacon of Colchester on 10 April 1617, and soon afterwards received the sinecure rectory of Fulham, in addition to being appointed a royal chaplain. All these various preferments he held until he was advanced to the episcopal bench.

Chamberlain, in a letter to Carleton dated 8 November 1617, mentions that "young King, the Bishop of London's eldest son," had preached a sermon at Paul's Cross. "It was thought," he writes, "a bold part of them, both that so young a man should play his first prizes in such a place and such a time, it being, as he professed, the primitiæ of his vocation, and the first sermon that ever he made. He did reasonably well, but nothing extraordinary, being rather slow of utterance and orator parum vehemens.

About this time King married Anne, eldest daughter of Robert Berkeley, esq., and granddaughter of Sir Maurice Berkeley. There were 4 or 5 children of the marriage, but only 2 survived. His wife died about 1624, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. From his elegy on her we learn that she had barely reached her 24th year.

After his father's death, on Good Friday 1621, and the circulation of the false rumour that he had died in communion with the church of Rome. King preached a sermon (on John xv. 20) at St. Paul's Cross, on 25 Nov. 1621, "Upon Occasion of that false and scandalous Report touching the supposed Apostasie of … J. King, late Bishop of London," 4to. He was made canon of Christ Church 3 March 1623-4, and John was made canon in the following August. On 19 May 1625 they were admitted to the degrees of B.D. and D.D. as accumulators and compounders, and on 10 July they (Act Sunday) they both preached at St. Mary's, the elder in the morning and the younger in the afternoon, the 2 sermons being published together, with the appropriate motto, "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unitie."

King's amiability endeared him to his friends. Among these were Ben Jonson, George Sandys, Sir Henry Blount, and James Howell. His friendship with Izaak Walton began about 1634, and continued till death. Walton (Life of Donne) describes King as "a man generally known by the clergy of this nation, and as generally noted for his obliging nature," and Wood (Athenae, ed. Bliss, iii. 842) declares that he was "the epitome of all honours, virtues, and generous nobleness, and a person never to be forgotten by his tenants and by the poor." Vicars maliciously styles him "a proud prelate" and "a most pragmatical malignant." He was on terms of closest friendship with John Donne, who appointed him one of his executors, and bequeathed to him the gold medal struck in commemoration of the synod of Dort.

Bishop

On 6 Feb. 1638-1639, shortly after the death of his brother John, King was made dean of Rochester, and on 6 Feb. 1641-2, the day after the lords had consented to pass the bill for depriving the bishops of their votes, he was elevated to the see of Chichester, being also presented to the rich rectory of Petworth in Sussex.

He was residing at his episcopal palace when Chichester surrendered to the parliament in 1643. In his will be complains that his library was seized "contrary to the condicõn and contracte of the Generall and Counsell of warre at the taking of that Citie," Walker (Sufferings of the Clergy, ii. 63) declares that he was "most Barbarously Treated." He was deprived of the rectory of Petworth, which was given by parliament to Francis Cheynell, and by a resolution of the House of Commons, 27 June 1643, his estates were ordered to be forthwith sequestrated, a petition for delay being rejected on 3 October.

From 1643 to 1651 he lived in the house of his brother-in-law, Sir Richard Hobart of Langley, Buckinghamshire. In 1649 he published on elegy on Charles I, dated "from my sad Retirement, March 11, 1648-9;" another elegy, A Deepe Groane ... by D.H.K., has been doubtfully assigned to him. The Psalmes of David ... To be sung after the old tunes vsed in ye Churches, appeared in 1651; 2nd edition 1671.

Shortly afterwards King retired to Ritchings, near Langley, the residence of Lady Salter (supposed to be the sister of Bishop Duppa), where other members of the King family and John Hales of Eton found refuge.

In 1659 King was engaged in negotiations for supplying the vacant bishoprics, and in the next year returned to Chichester. Wood says that at the Restoration he "became discontented, as I have heard, and a favorer thereupon of the presbyterians in his diocese."

On 20 May 1661, "being the happy day of his majesties inauguration and birth," he preached a sermon (published in 1661, 4to) at Whitehall, and on 24 April 1662 he delivered an impressive funeral sermon (published in 1662, 4to) on Bishop Duppa at Westminster Abbey.

King died at Chichester 30 Sept. 1669, and was buried in the cathedral. His 2nd son, Henry, died 21 February 1668-9; his eldest son, John, died 10 March 1670-1.

Writing

Poetry

In 1657 his scattered Poems, 8vo, were collected. The unsold copies were reissued in 1664 with a new title-page and some additional elegies. In the edition of 1700 the additional elegies were cancelled, and the volume was entitled Ben Jonson's Poems, Paradoxes, and Sonnets. Some of the poems had been published before 1657; the epistle to George Sandys was printed in 1638.

King wrote many elegies on royal persons and on his private friends. His elegy on Gustavus Adolphus appeared in the Swedish Intelligencer, pt. iii. 1633; another on Donne was prefixed to Donne's Poems, 1633; another on Ben Jonson was contributed to Jonsonus Virbius, 1638 In 1649 he published on elegy on Charles I. The additional poems in his edition of 1664 include elegies on the Earl of Essex, Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, and Lady Stanhope. His "elegy for his wife is considered one of the best in the English language."

King did not prepare the 1657 volume for publication, and some of the poems appear not to belong to him. The verses on Lord Dorset's death are found in Bishop Corbet's poems. "My Midnight Meditation" is ascribed on early manuscript authority to his brother Dr. John King, and 2 pieces are found among the poems attributed (often wrongly) to the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyard. A poem beginning "Like to the falling of a star" is found among Francis Beaumont's poems, but probably it belongs neither to Beaumont nor King.

In 1843 Archdeacon Hannah edited King's Poems and Psalms, with an elaborate biographical notice.

Miscellaneous

In 1626 appeared A Sermon of Deliverance, 4to, preached on Easter Sunday at the Spittle by request of the lord mayor and aldermen; in 1627 Two Sermons, preached at Whitehall in Lent, March 3, 1625. and Februarie 30. 1626, 4to; and in 1628 An Exposition upon the Lord's Prayer. Deliuered in certaine Sermons in the Cathedrall Church of St. Pavl, 4to; 3nd edition 1634.

King was among the contributors to Justa Oxoniensiae, 1613, on the death of Henry, prince of Wales; Epithalamia, 1613, on the marriage of Princess Elizabeth; Justa Funebria Ptolemaei Oxonienis, Thomas Bodleii Equitis Aurati, 1613-14; Jacobi Ara, 1617; Annae Funebria Sacra, 1619; and Parentalia Jacobo, 1625.

Recognition

The widow of King's son John erected a monument at Chichester cathedral to his memory and that of her husband.

His poems "A Contemplation Upon Flowers", "A Renunciation", and "Exequy on his Wife" were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

King's portrait hangs in Christ Church hall.

Publications

• Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes and Sonnets. London: J.G., for Richard Marriot & Henry Herringman, 1657; London: Henry Herringman, 1664
  • also published as Ben Johnson's Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes and Sonnets. London: 1700.
• English Poems (edited by Lawrence Mason). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1914.
• Poems (edited by Margaret Crum). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.

Non-fiction

• A Sermon of Deliuerance. London: Iohn Hauiland, for Iohn Marriot, 1626.
• Two sermons preached at VVhite-hall in Lent. London: Iohn Hauiland, 1627.
• Sermons (edited by Mary Hobbs). Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press / Cranbury, NJ: Associated University presses / Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1992.

Translated

• The Psalmes of David; turned into meter. London: Ed. Griffin, for Humphrey Moseley, 161,

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

A Contemplation Upon Flowers by Henry King

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Bullen, Arthur Henry (1892) "King, Henry" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 31 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 133-134 . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 4, 2018.

External links

Poems

• "A Contemplation Upon Flowers"
• "A Renunciation"
• King, Henry (1592-1669) ("The Exequy") at Representative Poetry Online
• Henry King 1592-1669 at the Poetry Foundation
• Index entry for Henry King at Poets' Corner
• Henry King at PoemHunter (76 poems)

Books

• Henry King poems at Amazon.com

About

• Henry King in the Encyclopædia Britannica

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: King, Henry