George Downame (—1634), otherwise known as George Downham, was an author of influential philosophical and religious works who served as Bishop of Derry during the early years of the Plantation of Ulster. He is said to have been a chaplain to both Elizabeth I and James I.
Early life and education George Downame was a son of William Downame, Bishop of Chester, and an elder brother of John Downame. He matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in November 1581, graduated B.A. in 1584/5, obtained the further degree of B.D. in 1595, and was made D.D. in 1601.John Peile (compiler), Biographical Register of Christ's College 1505-1905, Vol.I, 1448-1665, Cambridge University Press, 1910, p. 166. In the early 1580s he was, although a bishop's son, briefly a "zealous espouser of puritan principles" and it was only after "mature study" that he "heartily embraced episcopy".John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and establishment of Religion during Queen Elizabeth's Reign, New Edition, Clarendon Press, 1824, Vol. III, Part I, pp. 719-720 ; Peter Ivan Kaufman, The Godly, Godlier and Godliest, The Elizabethan World (ed. Susan Doran, Norman Jones), Routledge, 2014, pp. 245-247. Heated debate among Fellows of Christ Church on such matters in the 1580s may account for the conformist Richard Clerke, a future translator of the King James Version, having been charged with striking the more radical Downame: see the entry for Richard Clerke at kingjamesbibletranslators.org.
Career to 1601 Downame was elected a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge in 1587 and shortly afterwards was chosen to be Professor of Logic at the University. Thomas Fuller considered "no man was then and there better skilled in Aristotle or a greater follower of Ramus".Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, New Edition (ed. F. Austin Nuttall), Vol. I, 1840, p. 291. Fuller classed Downame (rendered "Dounham") as "the top-twig of the branch" in the Aristotelian-Ramist school of thought. The supremacy of Aristotle in the study of Logic (or Dialectics) was in decline and the writings of Petrus Ramus became increasingly dominant, in large part due to Downame's role as "the Cambridge apostle" for Ramus's approach.Augustus De Morgan, "On the Syllogism III, and on Logic in General", Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Vol. X (1864), p. 181 (reprinted in On the Syllogism and Other Logical Writings, Routledge, 1966, p. 84). It is likely the dominance of Ramus at Cambridge did not long outlive Downame's personal career there: ibid. In 1601 he published an 800-page commentary on Ramus's 95-page Dialecticae,Commentarius in Rami Dialecticam. First publication was in Frankfurt, where four more editions were printed between 1605 and 1631; the first London edition dates from 1669: Jameela Lares, "The Ghost of Rhetoric: Milton's Logic and the Renaissance Trivium", in A Concise Companion to the Study of Manuscripts, Printed Books and the Production of Early Modern Texts, ed. Edward Jones, John Wiley & Sons, 2015, p.194. the eloquence of Downame so opening the "clenched fist" of the subject matter as to "smooth and stroke one with the palm thereof".Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England.
By 1593, he was divinity lecturer at St Paul's Cathedral, where he held the prebend of Caddington Major, and on appointment to the vicarage of Sandbach in the following year he also became a prebendary of Chester. In September 1596 he was preferred by Elizabeth I to the rectory of St Margaret's, Lothbury, continuing there until 1601 when his brother John succeeded him in the living.John Ingle Dredge, Dr George Downame, Bishop of Derry, Manchester, 1882, pp. 4-5.
Among his parishioners at Lothbury was the diplomat Sir Henry Killigrew, to whom Downame dedicated the printed text of his Easter Sermon of 1602, declaring that "to your Worship, your loving brother and the virtuous Lady your wife I am for great benefits exceedingly bound".Downame, "Abraham's Tryall: a Sermon preached at the Spittle in Easter weeke, Anno Domini 1602", London, 1602. Sir Henry's brother, Sir William Killigrew, was also influential at Court. Both Sir Henry and his brother Sir William Killigrew were on intimate terms with the Earl of Essex, which may have contributed to Downame's appointment as chaplain to the ill-fated Earl by 1599.In December 1599 Downame was summoned to explain himself to the Privy Council for publicly praying for the Earl, whose health and favour were both in decline: Notes and Queries, Second Series, Vol.II (1856), p. 61. He is said also to have served as a chaplain to Elizabeth IPeile, Biographical Register of Christ's College; Downame's father had been chaplain to Elizabeth before her succession. and James I.Henry Cotton, The Succession of the Prelates and Members of the Cathedral Bodies of Ireland, Hodges & Smith, Dublin, 1850, Vol. III, p. 317.
Career from 1601 Downame held the rectory of Munden Magna, Hertfordshire, from 1601. While there he published the substance of his teaching at St Paul's in successive volumes.Dredge, Dr George Downame, p. 5. These volumes included A Treatise concerning Antichrist (in two books), 1603, and Lectures on the XV Psalme, 1604, both dedicated to James I. Downame also prepared a Treatise on the Ten Commandments containing the sum of his lectures at St Paul's; from this was extracted "Abstract on the Duties commanded and Sins forbidden in the Law of God", published in 1620: see Dredge, p. 12.
In 1616 he was appointed Bishop of Derry.Cotton, The Succession of the Prelates and Members of the Cathedral Bodies of Ireland, gives the date of his presentment as 6 December 1616 followed by consecration in January 1617. The Ordnance Survey of the County of Londonderry, Vol. I, Dublin, 1837, p. 60, states his letter of appointment under the Privy Seal was dated 28 October and his patent 6 December 1616. His diocese, comprising 45 parishes, was potentially valuable but in a state of decay. Little remained of the fabric of its old cathedral and 34 of its churches were ruinous or roofless.Londonderry Sentinel, 14 July 1945. Downame's own account of the condition of his See in 1622 survives in An Account of the State of the Diocese of Derry. This was very much his own work - written in the first person and with candid comment on personalities - and forms part of The Ulster Visitation Book preserved at Trinity College Dublin.
Downame's seventeen years as bishop saw the commencement and completion of Derry's new Cathedral Church of St Columb (the first non-Roman Catholic cathedral to be built in Western Europe) and, following his failure to agree terms with the Irish Society for a suitable site within the city, he built a new Bishop's Palace overlooking Lough Swilly at Fahan. Although this was constructed on ecclesiastical land, the building costs of 2,000 marks were paid by Downame from his own private means, and in September 1634 Charles I directed Lord Deputy Wentworth to pay Downame's widow rent for the property out of the Irish Exchequer.David Dickson, Derry's Backyard: The Barony of Inishowen 1650-1800, Donegal History and Society, eds. William Nolan and ors, Geography Publications, 1995, p. 412; Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland, 1633-1647, ed. Robert Pentland Mahaffy, HMSO (London, 1901), p. 78.
Downame's appointment to the See of Derry was a fitting sequel to the Church of Ireland's adoption of its own confession of faith (the "Irish Articles") in the previous year. Although he had embraced the episcopalian tradition, his theology chimed with the Calvinist tone of the Irish Articles and he brought to Ireland a deep-seated antipathy and hostility to the Church of Rome, which he declared had been controlled by Antichrist since the accession of Boniface III as Pope in 607.George Downame, Treatise concerning Antichrist, divided into two books, the former proving that the Pope is Antichrist; the latter maintaining the same assertion against all the objections of Robert Bellarmine, Jesuit and Cardinal of the Church of Rome, London, 1603; and see Alan Ford, "Force and Fear of Punishment: Protestants and Religious Coercion in Ireland 1693-33", in "Enforcing Reformation in Ireland and Scotland 1580-1700", ed. Crawford Gribben and Elizabethanne Boran, Aldgate Press, Aldershot, 2006.
His beliefs made him particularly acceptable to the Scots Presbyterian settlers in UlsterCharles Pastoor, Galen K. Johnson, Historical Dictionary of the Puritans, Scarecrow Press, 2007, p. 108. and he was vehement in opposing toleration of Roman Catholic practice. He spoke the Irish Bishops' declaration of opposition when preaching before Lord Deputy Falkland in April 1627, saying toleration made one "an accessory to superstition and idolatry and to the perdition of a seduced people".Samuel R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of Civil War, 1603-1642, New Edition, Longman Green & Company, London, 1891, Vol. VIII: 1635-1639, pp. 15-16.
Catholic priests had a strong hold over the native population in Downame's diocese"Though they be rude, ignorant and vicious fellows, yet carry the Natives after them": Downame's assessment in the concluding section of his Visitation. and, in despair at the civil and military authorities' acquiescence in this, he obtained from Dublin a special commission allowing him to arrest and detain all within his jurisdiction who refused obedience to him on spiritual matters.Dredge, Dr George Downame, p. 6; Rev. John Graham (writing as "Statisticus"), "Desiderata Curiosa Derriana", No. 72, Londonderry Sentinel, 5 November 1842, citing Loftus No. 85, Trinity College Dublin; and see Alexander Gordon, Dictionary of National Biography, 1908-9, Vol.4, pp. 1300-1301 (entry for Downham or Downame, George). He favoured the appointment of clergy who could catechise and preach in Irish in those parishes where it was the most spoken language,Alexander Gordon, DNB, p. 1301. and it was perhaps on such account that Fuller declared "This learned bishop was the greatest beauty [of his diocese], endeavouring by gentleness to cicurate and civilise the wild Irish, and proved very successful therein".Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England.
Final years In 1631, Downame published, at Dublin, The Covenant of Grace in which, observed Archbishop James Ussher, he "handleth at full the Controversy on Perseverence and the Certainty of Salvation".James Ussher to Dr Samuel Ward, 10 December 1630 (Richard Parr, The Life of the Most Reverend James Ussher, late Lord Archbishop of Armagh... with a Collection of three-hundred letters..., London, 1686, Letter CLIX at p. 438). Passages within this exposition (written in 1604) were in conflict with the Arminian tendencies of Archbishop William Laud who, in the King's name, ordered all copies of the book to be seized. By the time Laud's instruction reached Dublin, most copies had already been distributed.James Seaton Reid, History of the Presbyterian Church In Ireland, Waugh & Innes, Edinburgh, 1834, p. 163.
Downame had arrived in Derry three years after agreement had been reached between the King and the City of London for the latter's conduct of the Londonderry Plantation. The City's progress with the enterprise was slow and in 1623 Sir Thomas Phillips was appointed to oversee reform of the Plantation. To encourage the Londoners' implementation of remedial work, their rents were sequestrated in 1625; the sequestration order was quashed in 1627 and a Royal Commission was established to investigate the Plantation's progress and problems. Downame became actively involved in these events, being appointed one of the 1625 sequestrators and a member of the 1627 Commission.James Stevens Curl, The Londonderry Plantation 1609-1914, Phillimore, 1986, pp. 72-84.