K ing, H enry

Abstract

Henry King (1592–1669) was baptized at Worminghall in Oxfordshire on 16 January 1592. The eldest of nine children of John King, who became bishop of London in 1611, he was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, taking his MA degree in 1614. He was ordained and made a prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral in January 1616. About this time, he married Anne Berkeley, a Kentish heiress, who bore him five children and died at the age of 24. The couple were leasing a house near the cathedral when John Donne became dean of St Paul's in 1621, the year in which Bishop John King died. In his role as chief residentiary canon, King developed a close relationship with the new dean, who had been an intimate friend of his father. Having been appointed archdeacon of Colchester and a royal chaplain‐in‐ordinary, King became a canon of Christ Church in 1624 and a doctor of divinity in 1625. Further preferment was delayed until the period of unrest before the Civil War, when he was installed as dean of Rochester in 1639 and consecrated bishop of Chichester in February 1642. After the fall of Chichester to a Parliamentary army, King was sequestered and ejected from his see. Between 1643 and 1660, he found refuge with various members of his family and by 1647 he had established a praying community at Richings, the home of Anne, Lady Salter, near Slough. During the 1650s, he continued to ordain priests according to the rite of the outlawed Book of Common Prayer and was involved in an abortive plot to secure the apostolic succession of the English church by crossing the Channel to consecrate new bishops. Passed over for the archbishopric of York at the Restoration, he returned to Chichester, where he died on 30 September 1669. He was buried in the cathedral.