Lancelot Andrewes

1555-1626. Bishop of Winchester. Born in London and educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, he was in 1576 elected fellow of his college and on his ordination in 1580 was appointed catechist. At the beginning of his academic career he held views similar to those of the predominant Puritanism of the Cambridge of his day. During the 1580s, while the struggle with the Puritans was at its height, Andrewes sided with the episcopal leaders of the Church of England. He became chaplain to both Queen Elizabeth and Archbishop Whitgift about 1587, and this led to his appointment as master of Pembroke Hall and other appointments in London in 1589. His opposition to Whitgift's Lambeth Articles* of 1595 showed that he was starting to oppose Calvinism in the Church of England.

His considerable reputation as a preacher in a new and ornate style brought him episcopal office under James I. He became bishop of Chichester in 1605, of Ely in 1609, and of Winchester in 1619. He was responsible for the Pentateuch and the historical books of the Old Testament in the Authorized Version of 1611. He was taken by James to Scotland to help enforce his policy of episcopal church government in that country in 1617. While William Laud* regarded Andrewes as his master, he should be linked with his friends Richard Hooker and George Herbert. Andrewes held a strong view of episcopacy, but was unwilling to unchurch continental churches which had lost the episcopate. Though he favored a more ordered ceremonial in his private chapel, he did not try to enforce these ideas in his dioceses. He is famous for his book of private devotions, the Preces Privatae, which was published posthumously in 1648. His reputation for saintliness has somewhat overshadowed his activities as a court ecclesiastic.