Anthony Earbury (Earburie, Erbery, etc.) (c. 1571-1638) was a minister in late Elizabethan and early Stuart England, who represented Puritan interests while remaining within the Anglican ministry. He is notable for his involvement in the puritan group at the Hampton Court Conference and his confrontation with Archbishop Richard Bancroft soon afterwards, and in later life for his resistance to a challenge to his ministry brought on personal grounds by Sir Edward Powell, Master of Requests. Associated with various groups and patrons interested in the emigrant Puritan ministry in America, he was prebendary of Wherwell in Hampshire, under the patronage of the Barons De La Warr, and vicar of Westonzoyland, Somerset for most of his career, and is thought to have been a chaplain to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.
Education Of Wiltshire origins, Earbury entered Magdalen Hall in the University of Oxford as a commoner, matriculating in October 1589 aged 18. He graduated B.A. at Merton College on 5 February 1591/92, and M.A. on 12 November 1594.'Earburye, Antony', in J. Foster (ed.), Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 (Oxford, 1891), pp. 440-79 (British History Online, accessed 4 October 2018). On 13 March 1598/99 he received royal presentation to the archdeaconry of St Asaph.Lambeth Palace Library, CM/10/22. He was instituted to the Rectory of Wherwell (Winchester jurisdiction) in May 1602 on the lay presentation of Anna, the dowager Lady De La Warr,West's second wife: the first (and mother of his heir Thomas) was Elizabeth Strange of Hunstanton. whose husband William West had died in 1595.Anne, the daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Swift of Andover, Hampshire, had married first Thomas Oliver; after the death of West, her second husband, she remarried to Richard Kemish of Andover. Kemish died in 1611, and Anne survived him. See Monumental Inscription on the tomb at St Mary the Virgin church, Andover: 'Parishes: Andover with Foxcott', in W. Page (ed.), A History of the County of Hampshire, Vol. 4 (London, 1911), pp. 345-58 (British History Online, accessed 6 October 2018). West himself (who had survived a conviction for treason under Queen Mary I in connection with Henry Dudley's conspiracy) had presented the notable puritan Stephen Bachiler to the vicarage of Wherwell in 1587,CCEd, 'Person: Earbury, Anthony (1602-1639)', Person ID 56628. and Bachiler was still in occupation at Earbury's institution as rector, the two men appearing together in the Liber cleri of 1603.CCEd, 'Person: Earbury, Anthony (1602-1639)', Person ID 56628. Location: Parish (Church): Wherwell CCEd Location ID: 15051 (Church of England Clergy database).
As prebendary rector of Wherwell, in which he continued until 1635, Earbury remained directly associated with the patronage of the De La Warr family, successively under Thomas West, 2nd Baron De La Warr (son of the first baron), who died in March 1601/02, and then of his son Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, who was Governor-for-life and Captain-general of the Colony of Virginia until his death in 1618.(T. West), The Relation of the Right Honourable the Lord De-La-Warre, Lord Governour and Captaine-Generall of the Colonie, planted in Virginea (William Hall for William Welbie, London 1611) Reprint (Internet Archive).W.M. Billings, 'Thomas West, twelfth baron De La Warr (1576–1618)', Encyclopedia Virginia (Library of Virginia).
The Sussex Petition Earbury is stated to have been part of the inner circle, together with John Rainolds, Laurence Chaderton, John Knewstubs and other University men and ministers, who prepared and advanced the Millenary Petition of 1603, meekly advocating to King James a series of reforms in the established church to enable Puritan ministers to remain in conformity with it.R.G. Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church (D. Appleton and Company, New York and London 1910), Vol. I, p. 254-56 (Internet Archive).
Its success led to the formation of a Puritan committee in London, led by Henry Jacob, to advance petitions on behalf of ministers and congregations in various regions of the country.P. Collinson, J. Craig, and B. Usher (eds), Conferences and Combination Lectures in the Elizabethan Church: Dedham and Bury St Edmunds 1582-1590, Church of England Records Society Vol. 10 (Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 130-32, & note 378 (Google). The editors fail to notice Earbury in the Alumni Oxonienses. Earbury was particularly involved with Stephen Goffe, rector of Bramber,Father of the regicide William Goffe, see C. Durston, 'Goffe, William (d. 1679?)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Samuel Norden, rector of Hamsey,Nordon was presented by Dorothy Lewknor nee Wroth in 1592, widow of Edward Lewknor, the cousin and co-accused of William West in 1556. Cced. John Frewen, rector of Northiam and others in the petitions for Sussex,S.B. Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft Church Historical Society, Vol. 84 (S.P.C.K., London 1962), p. 57. which were circulated, claiming that the whole laity of Sussex approved of its contents. This raised such a stir that its promoters, including Earbury, were arrested in late September 1603 at the instigation of John Whitgift and Richard Bancroft, and were interrogated by the Bishop of Chichester and the Privy Council.Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church, I, pp. 306-09, and sources there cited.
Despite these difficulties, Earbury, Norden, Frewen and Goldsmith represented Sussex among the puritan reformists admitted to the Hampton Court Conference in 1604.Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (HMSO, London 1900), pp. 32-40, at p. 34. Among those occupying formal places in the conference Chaderton (Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge) and Reinolds (President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford) were received gracefully, but the King thought the prominent East Anglian puritan Knewstubs an uncharitable man.
Richard Bancroft Soon after this, Earbury challenged the episcopal party in the person of Richard Bancroft, then Bishop of London. He found that Bancroft had, over the preceding years and up to the present, been involved in secret discussions and negotiations with the Catholics.Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church, I, p. 346-47. He drafted a bill accusing Bancroft of treason, which was printed and put forth by William Jones, puritan propagandist.W.H. Curtis, 'William Jones: Puritan printer and propagandist', The Library: A Quarterly Review of Bibliography, series 5, vol. XIX, Issue 1 (1 January 1964), pp. 38-66. Earbury was then living in the Devon house of Thomas West, "more in curtesie then for anie stipend".M.F. Stieg & M.S. Dalton, Laud's Laboratory, the Diocese of Bath and Wells in the Early Seventeenth Century (Associated University Presses, Inc., 1982), p. 192. The bill was delivered for presentation by Herbert Pelham (1545-1620), son-in-law of the 2nd Baron de la Warr,A. Davidson and B. Coates, 'Pelham, Herbert (1545-1620), of Fordington, Dorset', in A. Thrush and J.P. Ferris (eds), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1604-1629 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), History of Parliament Online. and was presented on 15 May 1604, "For the Declaration of certayne practises of the Bishops of London to be treson",Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft, pp. 192-93, 239. the Speaker and Commons deemed it to be libellous and sent Jones and Earbury to Newgate Prison for examination by the Privy Council.P.D. Halliday, Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire (Harvard University Press 2010), p. 419 note 10. Journal of the House of Commons, Vol. 1: 1547-1629 (HMSO, London 1802), pp. 210b, 253a, 985a; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1603-10, p. 109. H.M.C. Hatfield, xv., pp. 262-3. The prisoners made their petitions for release,'Earbury's petition', 05 July 1604, in Journal of the House of Commons, 1, pp. 252-53 (British History Online). and it appears that, while Bancroft had in fact been in negotiation with the Catholics this had been with royal approval from both Queen Elizabeth and King James, and the Council was mainly concerned because the secret discussions had been "leaked".Usher, Reconstruction of the English Church, I, pp. 346-47 (Internet Archive).
Earbury, being in possession of this knowledge, was released without further adverse consequences, and indeed managed to retain his position as prebendary rectory of Wherwell, while by 1605 Samuel Norden, Stephen Goffe and Stephen Bachiler were deprived or ejected from their livings for their unwillingness to conform.'Norden, Samuel (1582-1605)', CCEd Person ID: 72973; 'Goffe, Stephen (1600-1622)', CCEd Person ID: 106979; 'Frewen, John (1582-1613)', CCEd Person ID: 69517; 'Bachiler, Stephen (1587-1605)', CCEd Person ID: 83757 (Church of England Clergy database). Earbury was by this time married, his son Mathias born c. 1604Aged 15 on matriculation in 1621. This Mathias Earbury is not to be confused with a namesake active c. 1690-1730. and his daughter Jane c. 1609.Aged 22 at marriage to Thomas Dymocke in 1631. On 10 July 1605 the four Wardens of the Worshipful Company of Mercers in London nominated Anthony Earbury MA to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral, to be presented by them to Archbishop Bancroft for the rectory of St Michael Paternoster Royal, London.Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Ref. CCA-DCc-ChAnt/L/112 (Discovery Catalogue).
Sir Richard Martyn Soon after this Earbury became involved in the case of John Eccleston (or Eglestone), a debtor in Ludgate Prison. A Warden of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in 1587/88, Eccleston helped prepare and approve the cases of weights for use in Elizabeth's reforms of her gold and silver coinage.R. Ruding, Annals of the Coinage of Great Britain and its Dependencies, 3rd Edition (John Hearne, London 1840), Vol. 1, pp. 351-52 (Google). His sister Dorcas (died 1599) was the wife of Sir Richard Martyn, Master of the Mint 1582-1617, Lord Mayor of London 1588/89 and 1593/94, and Master of the Goldsmiths' Company in 1592/93. The Martyns were supporters of presbyterian reform of the church. With a fellow goldsmith Eccleston had acquired two parts, and a lease of the third, of the manor of Elsham Priory, in Elsham, North Lincolnshire, from Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby, all of which in time passed to Eccleston alone.Chancery Final Decrees, Sir Richard Martyn v. Anthony Erburie, 6 May, 7 James I, Ref. C78/152/15. View images at AALT, C78/152 IMG 0004, 0005, 0006, 0007. In 1597 several goldsmiths had complained that Martyn was retaining large sums from them and converting it to his own use.Ruding, Annals of the Coinage of Great Britain, I, p. 352. By the early 1600s Eccleston had fallen heavily into debt, not least to Sir Richard Martyn, and was imprisoned for some long time.Chancery Final Decrees, Sir Richard Martyn v. Anthony Erburie, 6 May, 7 James I, Ref. C78/152/15.