Daniel Featley, also calledFairclough and sometimes calledRichard Fairclough/Featley (15 March 1582 – 17 April 1645), was anEnglishtheologian and controversialist. He fell into difficulties with Parliament due to his loyalty toCharles I of England in the 1640s, and he was harshly treated and imprisoned at the end of his life.
Daniel Featley was born atCharlton-upon-Otmoor,Oxfordshire, on 15 March 1582, the second son of John Fairclough.[1] by his wife Marian Thrift. His father was cook toLaurence Humphrey, President ofMagdalen College, Oxford, and afterwards toCorpus Christi College in the same university. Featley was the first of his family to adopt the surname.
Featley was educated as a chorister of Magdalen College.John Rainolds, President of Corpus, was his godfather and benefactor, and Featley is noted as a protégé of Rainolds, a leadingPuritan spokesman.[2] He was admitted scholar of Corpus Christi College 13 December 1594, and probationer fellow 20 September 1602, having taken hisB.A. degree on 13 February 1601. He proceededM.A. on 17 April 1606, and became noted as a disputant and preacher. In 1607 he delivered an oration at Rainolds' funeral.[3]
In 1610 and for the two following years he was chaplain toSir Thomas Edmondes, the English ambassador at Paris, and was noticed for his attacks on Catholic doctrine and his disputations withJesuits. Twenty-one of the sermons preached by him in the ambassador's chapel are printed.[4] Featley commencedBD on 8 July 1613, and was the preacher at the act of that year. He seems to have given offence by his plain speaking, even in consecration sermons.[3]
Featley was domestic chaplain toGeorge Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury. For the benefit ofMarc Anthony de Dominis and at Abbot's request, Featley in 1617 kept his exercise for the degree ofD.D. underJohn Prideaux; Prideaux lost his temper, and Abbot had some difficulty in effecting a reconciliation. De Dominis, soon after appointedmaster of the Savoy, gave Featley a brother's place in that hospital. In 1610 he had preached the rehearsal sermon at Oxford, and by the Bishop of London's appointment he discharged the same duty atSt Paul's Cross in 1618.[3]
At the invitation of an old pupil, Ezekiel Arscot, Featley accepted the rectory ofNorth Hill, Cornwall, which he soon vacated on his institution by Abbot to the rectory ofSt Mary-at-Lambeth, 6 February 1619. On 27 June 1623 a famous conference was held at the house ofSir Humphrey Lynde between Featley andFrancis White, thedean of Carlisle, and the JesuitsJohn Piercy (alias Fisher) and John Sweet; an account was surreptitiously printed the same year, with the titleThe Fisher catched in his owne Net. Featley, by Abbot's command, prepared an elaborate report of that and other controversies.[5] The king, James I, himself asked to engage with him in a disputation, which Featley afterwards published.[6] Some time before 1625 Abbot gave him the rectory ofAll Hallows, Bread Street, which Featley was afterwards allowed to exchange for the rectory ofActon, Middlesex, to which he was instituted on 30 January 1627.[3]
In 1622 Featley had married Mrs. Joyce Halloway, or Holloway. She was the daughter of William Kerwyn, and had already been twice married. There being at the time no parsonage at Lambeth, Featley resided in his wife's house at the end of Kennington Lane. He concealed his marriage for some time, in case it should interfere with his residence atLambeth Palace; but in 1625 he ceased to be chaplain to Abbot. Featley had been refused admission to the palace, because an illness from which he was suffering was supposed to be the plague; it proved to be a sharp attack ofague, and he abruptly resigned.[3]
Daniel Featley was also a chaplain in ordinary toCharles I of England, and was appointed Provost of the decliningChelsea College in 1630. A devotional manual entitledAncilla Pietatis was published in 1626 and proved very popular; a sixth edition appeared in 1639, translations into French and other languages were made, and it was a special favourite with Charles I in his troubles.[3]
While Featley andWilliam Laud, Abbot's successor, were not on good terms, he strongly defended the Church of England andepiscopacy in the 1640s. He was a witness against Laud in 1634, when the primate was charged with having made superstitious innovations inLambeth Chapel. Laud, two years later, ordered many passages reflecting on the Roman Catholics in Featley'sClavis Mystica to be obliterated, before allowing the book to be printed. These passages were reproduced byWilliam Prynne, in hisCanterburies Doome.[3]
In 1641 Featley was nominated by the House of Lords as one of the subcommittee 'to settle religion,' which met at theJerusalem Chamber, Westminster, under the presidency ofJohn Williams, thenDean of Westminster. He wrote animadversions on a Catholic tract calledA Safegard from Shipwracke to a prudent Catholike, to which he gave the title ofVertumnus Romanus (1642); and began marginal annotations onSt Paul's Epistles, which were printed in the Bible issued by theWestminster Assembly in 1645. As theFirst English Civil War broke out, he was harassed and in some danger. After theBattle of Brentford, 13 November 1642, some of theEarl of Essex's troops, who were quartered at Acton, set fire to his barns and stables, broke open the church, pulled down the font, smashed the windows and burnt the communion rails in the street. On 10 February 1643, in the middle of a service, five soldiers rushed into Lambeth Church intending to murder Featley, who had been warned, and kept out of the way. Two parishioners were wounded and died.[3]
Featley was next brought before theCommittee for Plundered Ministers on articles exhibited against him by three of his Lambeth parishioners, whom he styles 'semi-separatists.' On 16 March 1643 he was called into the exchequer chamber to answer the charges. The committee refused to hear his witnesses, and voted him out of his living on 23 March, four only out of seventeen being present. The order was not reported to the Commons until 11 July, when it was negated. Earlier in the year he had been offered, says his nephewJohn Featley, the chair of divinity atLeyden, but declined it because of age. He attended the meetings of Westminster Assembly, of which he was nominated a member in June. He spoke on behalf of episcopacy, and denounced the alienation of church property and the toleration of new sects. He also refused to assent to all of thesolemn league and covenant. His speeches, together with 'sixteen reasons for episcopal government,' are printed inSacra Nemesis; the speeches alone, asOrationes Synodicae, in the sixth edition of hisDippers Dipt. In consequence of a message from King Charles, whose chaplain he was, Featley eventually withdrew from the assembly. Soon afterwards he was detected in a correspondence with ArchbishopJames Ussher, then with the King at Oxford, and he was imprisoned as a spy, inLord Petre's house inAldersgate Street. According to his sentence, his rectories and library only were ordered to be sequestered, but he was despoiled;Richard Baxter among others sympathised.[3]
During his imprisonment Featley returned to controversy. At the request of the parliament he wrote a treatise against the Catholics.[7] While writing it, says his nephew, he was allowed three books at a time from his library. In January 1644 he published as the third section ofThe Gentle Lash his 'Challenge' against the puritan divines of the day, in which he offered to vindicate the articles, discipline, and liturgy of the Church of England. Another controversy was with a fellow-prisoner, the Baptist minister,Henry Denne. Featley had on 17 October 1643 held fierce argument inSouthwark withWilliam Kiffin and three otherBaptists, the substance of which he embodied in his best-known work entitledThe Dippers Dipt[8] Denne, hurt by the tone of Featley's diatribe, offered to dispute the ten arguments with him face to face; and then drew up hisAntichrist Unmasked, which appeared by 1 April 1645, when Featley was already a dying man; another reply bySamuel Richardson, entitledSome brief Considerations, followed soon afterwards.[3]
Featley was in bad health before his imprisonment, and after eighteen months' confinement he was permitted out on bail to move to Chelsea College for change of air. There he died of asthma anddropsy, 17 April 1645, and on the 21st was buried in the chancel of Lambeth church. The sermon was preached by Dr. William Leo, an old friend.[3]
Daniel Featley was involved in the translation of theKing James Version of the Bible. In the project, Featley served in the "First Oxford Company", responsible for the later books of the Old Testament.[9]
His works include:
Featley also published, London, 1638, Sir Humphrey Lynde's posthumous reply to the JesuitRobert Jenison, entitledA Case for the Spectacle, or a Defence of Via Tuta, together with a treatise of his own calledStrictura in Lyndomasttigem, by way of supplement to the Knight's Answer, and aSermon [on Numb. xxiii, 10] preached at his Funerall at Cobham, June the 14th, 1636 reprinted in the supplement toEdmund Gibson'sPreservative from Popery (vol. v. ed. 1849). A set of Latin verses, written by him in 1606, giving an exposition of Jesuiticalamphibology, was prefixed toHenry Mason'sNew Art of Lying, London, 1634.[3]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Goodwin, Gordon (1889). "Featley, Daniel". InStephen, Leslie (ed.).Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 18. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 276–280.
