Early life and education
He was the son of John Herring, rector of Walsoken in Norfolk, who had previously been vicar of Foxton, near Cambridge, and his wife, Martha Potts. [1]
He was educated at Wisbech Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1710, graduating B.A. 1714, M.A. 1717. Having migrated to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in 1714, he was a fellow of Corpus Christi from 1716 to 1723, and graduated D.D. (comitia regia) in 1728. [2] [3]
At Cambridge, he was an exact contemporary of Matthew Hutton, who succeeded him in turn in each of his dioceses.
Career
Herring became a close friend of Philip Yorke, the Solicitor General, who would later, as Lord Hardwicke, serve for many years as Lord Chancellor, and as such, was able to advance quickly. In 1727 he became a chaplain to King George II, in 1732 Dean of Rochester, and in 1737 he was appointed Bishop of Bangor, consecrated 15 January 1738.
Archbishop of York
On 21 April 1743 he was translated to York and appointed Archbishop of York. On 23 September 1745, during the Jacobite rising, Herring gave a rousing sermon which, as Paul Langford notes, "captured the patriotic imagination as nothing previously had. It was to remain long in the collective mind of patriotic Protestantism." [4] At a speech at York Castle on 24 September, Herring said:
...these Commotions in the North are but Part of a Great Plan concerted for our Ruin—They have begun under the Countenance, and will be supported by the Forces of France and Spain, our old and inveterate, (and late Experience calls upon me to add, our savage and blood-thirsty) Enemies—A Circumstance that should fire the Indignation of every honest Englishman. If these Designs should succeed, and Popery and Arbitrary Power come in upon us, under the Influence and Direction of these two Tyrannical and Corrupted Courts, I leave you to reflect, what would become of every Thing that is valuable to us! We are now bless'd with the mild Administration of a Just and Protestant King, who is of so strict an Adherence to the Laws of our Country, that not an Instance can be pointed out, during his whole reign, wherein he made the least Attempt upon the Liberty, or Property, or Religion, of a single Person. But if the Ambition and Pride of France and Spain, is to dictate to us, we must submit to a Man to govern us under their hated and accursed Influence, who brings his Religion from Rome, and Rules and Maxims of his Government from Paris and Madrid. [5]
Horace Walpole said this speech "had as much true spirit, honesty and bravery in it as ever was penned by an historian for an ancient hero". [6] When Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, repeated the speech's contents to King George II, the King ordered that the speech be printed in the Gazette. After Hardwicke enquired whether he should send Herring a message containing the King's admiration of "his zeal and activity", the King said this was not enough: "...you must also tell the Archbishop that I heartily thank him for it." [7]
Herring organised Yorkshire into resistance against the Jacobites by raising volunteers and money. According to Reed Browning, Herring's behaviour during the rebellion had demonstrated that he was "a resolute Whig, a brave Briton, and a commanding prelate." [8] Herring supported the Walpoleon Whigs because he viewed the Protestant Succession embodied in the House of Hanover as essential to Britain: "Let us remember that, next under God, Union at Home, and Loyalty and Affection to the King and his Royal Family, are our great and sure Defence." [9] He was also deeply suspicious of France as a Roman Catholic nation and a threat to the British nation. [10]
Archbishopric of Canterbury
On 21 Oct 1747, he was nominated as Archbishop of Canterbury. There he generally followed the lead of his friend the Lord Chancellor, and frequently came into disputes with the Duke of Newcastle, the Secretary of State. Herring, like his immediate predecessor, had taken a generally Hanoverian side through the Bangorian controversy and stood against the convocation.
Herring is generally credited as being the author of "A New Form of Common Prayer", published anonymously in 1753 in response to John Jones' "Candid Disquisitions" (1749). However, as a conciliator he eschewed controversy and rejoiced that he was "called up to this high station, at a time, when spite, and rancour, and bitterness of spirit are out of countenance; when we breathe the benign and comfortable air of liberty and toleration." [11]
He died in 1757 and was buried in Croydon Minster in Surrey.
Jacobitism was largely a 17th- and 18th-century movement that supported the restoration of the senior line of the House of Stuart to the British throne. The name is derived from Jacobus, the Latin version of James.
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, was a British statesman and Whig politician who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.
John Kemp was a medieval English cardinal, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor of England.
Thomas Secker was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England.
Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, was a British Whig statesman, most notable for his two terms as Prime Minister of Great Britain. He became the patron of many Whigs, known as the Rockingham Whigs, and served as a leading Whig grandee. He served in only two high offices during his lifetime but was nonetheless very influential during his one and a half years of service.
Henry Pelham was a British Whig statesman who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1743 until his death in 1754. He was the younger brother of Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who served in Pelham's government and succeeded him as prime minister. Pelham is generally considered to have been Britain's third prime minister, after Robert Walpole and the Earl of Wilmington.
Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne and 1st Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, was a British Whig statesman, whose official life extended throughout the Whig supremacy of the 18th century. He is commonly known as the Duke of Newcastle.
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, KG PC FRS was an English and later British statesman of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory ministry. He was raised to the peerage of Great Britain as an earl in 1711. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as Lord High Treasurer, effectively Queen Anne's chief minister. He has been called a prime minister, although it is generally accepted that the de facto first minister to be a prime minister was Robert Walpole in 1721.
Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, was an English lawyer and politician who served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. He was a close confidant of the Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister between 1754 and 1756 and 1757 until 1762.
Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow, PC, KC, was a British lawyer and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1765 to 1778 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Thurlow. He served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain for fourteen years and under four Prime Ministers.
Charles Yorke PC was briefly Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. His father was also Lord Chancellor, and he began his career as a Member of Parliament. He served successively as Solicitor-General and Attorney-General for several governments, during which he was best known for writing what became the Quebec Act. He was appointed Lord Chancellor over his objections, but he committed suicide only three days after taking the post.
The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed exclusion in the belief inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
Thomas Parker, 1st Earl of Macclesfield, was an English Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1705 to 1710. He was Lord Chief Justice from 1710 to 1718 and acted briefly as one of the regents before the arrival of King George I in Britain. His career ended when he was convicted of corruption on a massive scale and he spent the later years of his life in retirement at his home, Shirburn Castle in Oxfordshire.
Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 3rd Baronet was a Welsh politician and landowner who sat in the British House of Commons from 1716 to 1749, when he died in office. A member of the Tory party, he was also a prominent Jacobite sympathiser. He helped engineer the downfall of Prime Minister Robert Walpole in 1742 and engaged in negotiations with the exiled Stuarts prior to the Jacobite rising of 1745 but did not participate in the rebellion himself. Watkin died in a hunting accident in 1749.
Events from the year 1715 in Great Britain.
Thomas Hayter was an English whig divine, who served as a Church of England bishop for 13 years, and was a royal chaplain. As a party advocate of the Pelhamites and a friend of the Duke of Newcastle, he was at the height of his powers in the 1750s. A scholar renowned in his days, it was for his divinity that Hayter was recommended, but his friendship with the court and royalty that exemplified his actual powers. He was considered tolerant and eclectic, learned and intelligent.
The Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746 was an Act of Parliament passed in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745 abolishing judicial rights held by Scots heritors. These were a significant source of power, especially for clan chiefs since it gave them a large measure of control over their tenants.
The Jacobite rising of 1715 was the attempt by James Edward Stuart to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled Stuarts.
Nicholas Fazakerley (1685?–1767), of Prescot, Merseyside, was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1732 to 1767.
Nathaniel Forster D.D. (1718–1757) was an English cleric, and a classical and biblical scholar.
