George Abbot is certainly the most significant Guildfordian in British history. His twenty-two years as Archbishop of Canterbury saw a flourishing of the spirit of Puritanism, the suppression of which by his successor was to lead to civil war.
Born in October 1562, George Abbot was one of six sons of Maurice Abbot, a clothworker on a modest scale. His parents had been persecuted as Protestants during the recent reign of Queen Mary: there is a demonstrable but inexplicable association of the cloth trade with radical Protestantism. They lived in a small cottage near the Town Bridge, opposite St Nicholas' church. The tale is told that his mother Alice dreamed that if she were to eat a pike caught in her bucket when she drew water from the river, then she would give birth to a son who would become a great man. It is said that she did catch a fish in this way and ate it: but whatever the truth of the story, her next son certainly distinguished himself.
George was given a free education at what is now called the Royal Grammar School - then known as the Free School - and went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1579. He took Holy Orders in 1583 and was evidently a brilliant scholar, becoming Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1600. It was at Oxford that he met William Laud, a man with whom he quarrelled and whose career he did his best to hinder. When Laud eventually replaced Abbot on his death in 1633, the pent-up frustrations he had suffered at the puritan Archbishop's hands may have led Laud to react more extremely against the puritans and so precipitate the religious confrontation that soon flared into civil war.
Perhaps the most positive contribution Abbot made was in the translation of the bible he helped to prepare in the early years of James I's reign - the Authorised Version, as it is usually known. He sat on the Oxford Committee that translated the Gospels, Acts and Revelations; crucial texts for puritan theology.
He had met the new King James, First of England and Sixth of Scotland, in 1603 and struck up a friendship with him. In 1608 Abbot defended James' interests in Scotland, supporting his version of the events known as the Gowrie Conspiracy and furthering the union of the English and Scots churches. As a reward he was appointed Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in the following year. The next year saw him made Bishop of London and in February 1611 the King nominated him as the next Archbishop of Canterbury at the dying request of Abbot's patron, the Earl of Dunbar. In many ways he was a surprising choice for the head of the English church: he had no popular support amongst the clergy, and had never been a parish priest. He was, however, a supporter of the monarchy and episcopacy, and perhaps James thought his moderate puritan views would be a compromise between the religious radicals and those we would now call High Church. In the event Abbot had the support of neither grouping. The king was his only supporter and even his favour was lost in 1613 when Abbot refused on principle to agree to the Earl of Essex's divorce. Perhaps the greatest damage he did to English politics was his subsequent assistance in replacing Rochester with Villiers as the King's favourite. Villiers, later the Duke of Buckingham, was to meddle disastrously in international affairs.
In 1619 George Abbot began building his Hospital of the Blessed Trinity in Guildford High Street. This he did out of love to the place of my birth and in conscious imitation of his predecessor Archbishop Whitgift's almshouse at Croydon. There was to be accommodation for twelve Brothers and eight Sisters, aged over sixty, unmarried and resident in Guildford for twenty years of more. They were to wear gowns of dark blue cloth with the badge of an Archbishop's mitre on the left sleeve. The building itself resembles very much one of the contemporary Oxford or Cambridge colleges a quadrangle with staircases leading to the individual rooms. There is a common room and a chapel with Flemish pictorial glass in the windows. The massive gate-house with its ogee-domed turrets and the shaped gables of the cross-wings are typical of Tudor brick building. The style was very old-fashioned at the time, however, owing nothing to the new Classical style coming into favour. There were apartments for Abbot himself and in the stained glass there are his coat-of-arms three gold pears and a chevron on a red shield and the punning motto Clamamus Abba Pater either We cry Abba. Father or We call Abbot father. He never married, and perhaps the Brothers and Sisters of his hospital were a substitute family for him.
He was not to enjoy his lodgings with a quiet mind however. In 1621, while the building was still incomplete, a tragic accident marred his happiness and his career. While hunting at Bramshill House, Hampshire, he accidentally killed a gamekeeper with a cross-bow. While pardoned by the King, his religious opponents took advantage of this mishap to make life difficult for him. In 1622, a charter was granted to the now-completed Hospital of the Blessed Trinity or Abbot's Hospital as it became generally called. The first residents were admitted and so began a tradition that has continued for over 380 years. One brief inmate was the Duke of Monmouth, who was held prisoner over the night of 12th July 1685 in the barred strongroom at the top of the gatetower. He had been captured after his rebellion had been defeated at the Battle of Sedgemore, and was on his way to a traitor's death at the Tower of London.
George Abbot crowned the new King Charles I in 1625, but by then he was an old and sick man. He went virtually into retirement, although in 1629 he built a cloth-making establishment behind his Hospital in Guildford to support the declining textile trade in the area.
George Abbot died at Croydon in August 1633 and was brought to Holy Trinity, Guildford to be buried. About two years later his youngest brother Sir Maurice one of the richest men in England though his merchant shipping interests and later Lord Mayor of London - erected a magnificent tomb with allegorical and symbolic figures. These were carved by the Christmas brothers, John and Matthew, who also executed the elaborate carvings on the King's flagship The Sovereign of the Seas launched two years later. This tomb, its pillars supported by carved books, is a fitting monument to the learned man who, as a contemporary remarked, was a better man than an Archbishop.
In April 1993 a statue of George Abbot, by the local sculptor Faith Winter, was erected in the High Street near to Abbot's Hospital. His true memorial, however, is his Hospital, still in use today for the purpose for which he intended.
Guildford Museum, Castle Arch, Guildford, Surrey
(01483) 444750
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