Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

JOHN SPURR

This imagined relationship is elusive: did Granville seek an ethical guide, a spiritual advisor, or simply a wise friend? 11 He made play of their lay and clerical identities, even conjuring up a cosy menage in Durham with enough income ‘to Content an honest Archdeacon, and A reasonable phylosopher’. 12 The vignette laid before you today of Archdeacon Granville, and his (passing) infatuation with John Locke, can do no more than illuminate a corner of the spiritual life: alas, there are no puritans, poets or republicans in evidence; and we catch only the faint echo of the ‘science of morality’ projected by the philosophers; but perhaps the frequent invocation of ‘friendship’ will lend these remarks a certain appropriateness to this occasion. 13 Granville hailed from an impeccably royalist West Country family: his father, Sir Bevil, died on the battlefield in 1643; his eldest brother was created earl of Bath in 1660, and two other siblings held posts at court. 14 A man of ‘pious and devout temper’, he was ordained in 1661 and the very next year appointed archdeacon of Durham by his father-in-law, John Cosin, bishop of Durham. 15 A determined administrator, Granville pursued Cosin’s agenda of undeviating conformity in the use of the Prayer Book; he required strict and exemplary lives of the diocesan clergy, expecting the performance of daily prayer and regular catechising; and became an ardent promoter of the frequent celebration and reception of the sacrament. 16 The nuances of seventeenth-century ‘churchmanship’ escape many of us, but it is worth registering the precise stance taken by Granville. He was unequivocally Protestant – ‘a true Christian (not Roman) Catholick’ – who relied on Christ, ‘my sole Mediator and Advocate,’ for salvation and renounced his own ‘righteousnesse’ and merits. He would have no truck with Rome, but maintained communion with the French Reformed 11 In his fifth ‘paper, concerning Exercise of Devotion’ Granville does consult Locke ‘as a spirituall physitian’: Locke, Correspondence , i. 637-40, at p. 639. 12 Locke, Correspondence, ii. 77. 13 That Granville raised the nature of virtue and vice with Locke at the exact moment when philosophers sought to forge a ‘science of morality’ should be food for thought. Although Granville would not have known it, Locke had gathered a group in his chamber in the early 1670s to discuss those ‘Measures, whereby a rational Creature put in that State, which Man is in, in this World, may, and ought to govern his Opinions, and Actions depending thereon’. Locke had no doubt that ‘ Morality is the proper Science, and Business of Mankind in general ’: John Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding , ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1975), pp. 7, 46, 646. The best treatment of Locke’s evolving moral thought is John Marshall, John Locke – Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge, 1994), accompanied by John Locke, Locke: Political Essays , ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge, 1997). 14 [Denis Granville], Counsel and Directions Divine and Moral (1685), pp. 108-9. John Granville (1628-1701), was an Interegnum royalist plotter and intermediary to George Monck, rewarded at the Restoration with the earldom of Bath and oversight of the West Country; Bernard (1631-1701) was a groom of the bedchamber to Charles II; and Joanna (1635-1709), a woman of the bedchamber to Catherine of Braganza. 15 Granville’s clerical career in the Durham diocese was spectacular: licensed as a preacher in the diocese (1662); archdeacon (1662); rector of Sedgefield and Easington (1662); rector of Elwick Hall (1664-8); first Prebendal Stall in Durham Cathedral (1662-8), second Prebendal Stall (1668-84); he succeeded John Sudbury as Dean of Durham in December 1684 while retaining his archdeaconry; he was created Oxford D.D. in 1670. 16 This abiding and dominant concern is evident in Granville’s published works, such as The Compleat Conformist (1684), and in his archive, for example, see Remains (1861), pp. 129-31, 164-83, 251-82; Remains (1865), pp. 11-23, 72-3, 83-4.

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