Julines Herring (1582–1644/5) was a Puritan clergyman within the Church of England who served in Derbyshire and at Shrewsbury. Ejected from his positions for nonconformity, he became a minister serving the English-speaking community in the Netherlands. He was a staunch proponent of Presbyterianism and an opponent of separatism.
Origins
Herring was born in Wales at Llanbrynmair, Montgomeryshire, often rendered in older sources in Anglicised forms, e.g. Flamber-Mayre,Brook, p. 489. or Flambere-Mayre. He was a son of Richard Herring, a prominent local politician of Coventry, who served at various times as mayor and sheriff.Clarke, p. 462. The Herring family had branches in Shropshire and the 1623 heraldic visitation of Shropshire named the parent Warwickshire branch as being "of Owsley iuxta Couentry" in Warwickshire,Visitation of Shropshire, p. 232. which seems to be the modern Allesley, a parish that was broken into smaller parts in Victorian times. St Andrew's Church, serving Allesley Green and Eastern Green on the eastern edge of Coventry, claims Pond Farm as the former local residence of Julines Herring.
Education and early life
It seems that the Herring family returned to Coventry while Julines was very young. He was schooled initially at the small border village of More, Shropshire by a Mr Perkin, a close relative of his mother. Samuel Clarke, whose 1651 account is the basis for all later biographers, thought that it was from Perkin at More that Herring "learned the Principles of Religion." Clarke describes Perkin as a minister at More-chappel and these details have generally been accepted at face value. However, the Clergy of the Church of England database lists More as a parish church within the Diocese of Hereford, not as a chapelry.CCEd Location ID: 3295. Eyton, the pioneering historian of Shropshire, considered that More probably began as a chapelry of Lydbury North but "became independent, at a period which the earliest Records fail to reach."Eyton, p. 290. CCEd does list some clergy at More in the 1580s and Perkin is not among them, although the database cannot be exhaustive. It does not note any parish school at More but there was one at nearby Lydbury, although records of staff seem to start only with the Restoration.CCEd Location ID: 239242. The older Dictionary of National Biography avers that Perkin was a minister at Morechurch: there is a Churchmoor, further east, in Lydbury North parish, but it is a hamlet with no chapel.
Herring then moved to the family home at Coventry, where he attended the Free Grammar School. Clarke credits his academic progress there to the then headmaster, whom he names as Reverend Master Tovey. Even as a schoolboy he was noted for his piety. Clarke credits him with an early interest and delight in the Bible passages that deal with faith and repentance – themes typically of great concern to Protestants. On play days, he and a few friends engaged in prayer and religious exercises before going out.
In May 1600 Herring was admitted as a scholar to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a new, specifically Protestant institution. University records show he graduated BA in the academic year 1603-4: Clarke thought Herring returned to Coventry as a Master of Arts. There he studied Divinity with the encouragement of Humphrey Fenn, a noted advocate of Presbyterianism and formerly a client of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. Fenn had been suspended from his ministry since 1590 for his activities within a Warwickshire classis within the Church of England and had not regained his vicarage of Holy Trinity Church, Coventry. Herring, however, seems to have found opportunities to preach, winning considerable approval.
Calke
Herring was approaching the age to take up a parish ministry of his own, but this required ordination. Number 36 of the Book of Canons, confirmed by the Convocations of Canterbury and York in 1604 and 1606 respectively, demanded that all candidates for ordination take a three-fold oath, accepting the royal supremacy, the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles. The subscription book of the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, which covered the area in Herring both lived and sought a living, summarised the oath as:
The king is the only supreme governor under God of all things spiritual as well as temporal: the Book of Common Prayer, with the ordering of bishops priests and deacons, contains nothing contrary to the word of God: the Articles of Religion (1562) are agreeable to the word of God.Coulton, p. 74.
Herring circumvented the requirement by securing ordination from an Irish bishop then visiting London. He was accompanied in this by other young Puritan men, including John Ball, a friend who was tutor to the children of Catherine and Robert Cholmondley.Clarke, p.441-2. Only after the ordination were the pair able to take up their first ecclesiastical appointments: Ball as curate of Whitmore in Staffordshire; Herring as preacher at Calke in Derbyshire.
Herring was recommended for the post at Calke by Arthur Hildersham, the vicar of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which was close by, although in Leicestershire.Clarke, p. 463. In his early years he was both friend and protégé of Hildersham,Rowe, p. 227. part of a generation of younger disciples that included Simeon Ashe and Hildersham's own son, Samuel.Rowe, p. 154. Herring was not the first member of Hilderham's circle appointed to Calke: Robert Bainbridge, the patron, had earlier installed George More, a close associate of Hildersham and of John Darrell. During the 1590s More took part in the religious exercises of the Hildersham circle, which included fasting, prayer, lectures and fellowship,Rowe, p. 161. and supported Darrell in the highly controversial work of exorcism.Rowe, p. 274.
Clarke considered Calke a relatively secure base for Herring because it was a peculiar jurisdiction exempt from episcopal authority, as well as bringing the support of a sympathetic patron. CCEd, citing a 1772 reference, makes clear that Calke was a donative, rather than a peculiar.CCEd Location ID: 233327. Magna Britannia, published in 1817, numbered Calke among nine Derbyshire parishes that were donativesLysons and Lysons, p. xi-xvii. before the Victorian abolition of these institutions. In a donative the patron had the right to make an appointment to the benefice without reference to the ordinaryPhillimore, p. 252-3. – in this case the local diocesan bishop. The church and the incumbent were exempt from ordinary jurisdiction:Phillimore, p. 254. in a peculiar there is an ordinary jurisdiction but it does not belong to the local bishop. Calke church was part of Calke manor – a former monastic estate that passed into lay hands through the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Although later named Calke Abbey, it had actually been a very small Augustinian priory, which was absorbed as a mere cell into its own daughter house, Repton Priory: under the founder's terms, the church had been given to the canons on condition they supply it with a priest.Page, pp. 58-63. Robert Bainbridge bought the Calke estate in 1582M. R. P., P.W. Hasler (ed). Bainbridge, Robert (d.c.1623), of Derby and Calke, Derbys. from Richard Wennesley, a local landowner who had recusant affinities.M. R. P., P.W. Hasler (ed). Wennesley, Richard (d.1594), of Wennesley (now Wensley), Derbys. and London. Bainbridge probably took on the opportunity and obligation to provide a minister in order to secure freedom of worship for himself,Rowe, p. 227, note 112. as he had several other houses and seems to have had his main residence in Derby. He was a militant Protestant, three times MP for Derby, who was imprisoned in the Tower of London during March 1587 after he had demanded the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots and supported Anthony Cope's proposal for a radical reform of Church government: he and his friends made the mistake of continuing to argue outside the chamber of the House of Commons, where they were not protected by parliamentary privilege.
Although Calke was a very small settlement, then as now, it seems to have formed an ideal base for Herring's ministry, which was primarily one of preaching. Clarke remarks that "God was pleased to set a broad scale to his Ministry." A clear and powerful preacher, he drew an audience from up to twenty towns and villages, with Sunday congregations in good weather so large that many were forced to cluster around the windows to hear him. Some brought picnics and made a day of it, while others bought refreshments from the "threepenny ordinary" provided for strangers. The impact of his preaching on the region was increased by the practice of returning home in groups, singing psalms and discussing the sermon. Clarke thought that the effectiveness of Herring's preaching as part of the Hildersham circle was proved by the very high retention of Puritan converts in the region, who remained with the cause through the "broken dividing times" that followed: presumably meaning the period of Thorough or absolute monarchy, the English Civil War and the Regicide. Herring seems to have had a profound influence over Simeon Ashe, later a moderate Presbyterian preacher and an intimate of important parliamentarian leaders, including Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke and Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester. Herring took the opportunity of a relatively stable period in his life to marry and start a family. His wife was Christian Gellibrand. The match was remembered in Puritan hagiography as particularly happy and mutually-supportive.Brook, p. 490.
Herring's ministry at Calke seems to have lasted until 1618. Clarke thought he was "forced from thence for Nonconformity by the Prelatical power, being informed against by ill-affected men." He gives no details of how Herring could be removed from a donative. Barbara Coulton, a recent historian of Shrewsbury during this the period, gives 1617 as the year Herring was recruited by William Rowley of Shrewsbury,Coulton, p. 75. suggesting that he was attracted by a more influential post rather than driven out of Calke. This is supported by the baptism of Christian, a daughter of Herring, at St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury as early as 1 February 1618.Coulton, p. 76.St Chad's parish register, Volume 1, p. 4. Herring's patron Bainbridge must by this time have been elderly, as he first sat in the House of Commons in 1571. He may have been in financial difficulties: although he had a vault prepared for his burial at Calke, he sold the estate only three years after Herring's departure and died before July 1623.
Shrewsbury