Abbot, GEORGE

Abbot, GEORGE, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of a Guildford cloth-worker, and was born 29th October 1562. In his seventeenth year he entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship (1583); and through Lord Buckhurst's influence he rose to be Master of University College (1597), Dean of Winchester (1600), and thrice Vice-chancellor of Oxford University (1600-5.) To a new patron, the Earl of Dunbar, with whom he visited Scotland (1608), he owed his promotion to the sees of Lichfield (1609), of London (1610), and finally of Canterbury (1611). A sincere but narrow-minded Calvinist, he was equally opposed to Catholics and to heretics, Arian or Arminian. He fined two recusants, he burnt two Arians, he consented that a clergyman should be put to the torture; but, withal, he was charitable, and far less obsequious to the kingly will than most of his compeers. His closing years were clouded by an accident, the shooting of a gamekeeper (1621); and during the last six he was almost superseded by his great adversary, Laud. He died at Croydon, 4th August 1633, and was buried at Guildford, where in 1619 he had founded a hospital.—His brother, ROBERT (1560-1617), from 1615 Bishop of Salisbury, was a learned theologian, and author of several controversial treatises.