Sir Henry Spelman and William Somner

Abstract In his biography of Sir Henry Spelman, published in 1698, the Oxford scholar Edmund Gibson expressed his admiration for ‘the knowledge of the Laws and Antiquities of our Nation ‘ that Spelman exhibited. ‘Those, for a good part of his life, he seems to have studied for the service of his country, and for his own diversion; but not with an eye to any particular undertaking. ‘1 From our more distant viewpoint, we can recognize that Spelman did have a great project in mind, but that, like most ambitious antiquarian schemes, it was only partially fulfilled. He desired to strengthen the whole fabric of the Commonwealth by firming the foundations in the deep past. The laws, rights, and entitlements of Church and state were his preoccupation; all these powers and privileges should mutually support and be consolidated by the monarchy. The frontispiece that he designed for his history of Church councils, Concilia, exemplified the structure of the stable state: it showed the king as the keystone of an arch upheld by the pillars of the secular and ecclesiastical powers.2 Spelman ‘s sense of the interdependence of Church, state, and monarch is everywhere apparent.