Samuel Harsnett

Samuel Harsnett
Installed	1629
Term ended	1631
Predecessor	George Montaigne
Successor	Richard Neile
Personal details
Born	June 1561
Died	May 1631
Buried	St Mary's Church, Chigwell

Samuel Harsnett (June 1561 - May 1631) was an English writer on religion and Archbishop of York from 1629.

Life

He was born in Colchester, Essex and educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School and Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he became a fellow and then master (1605-1616). Harsnett became Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University. In 1584 he was disciplined by Archbishop Whitgift for preaching against predestination. Harsnett went on to be the vicar of Chigwell from 1597 - 1605 and in 1619 he purchased land to found Chigwell School (1629) in his former parish. He became Archbishop of York in 1629 after being Bishop of Norwich from 1619 to 1628. A brass of Harsnett can be found in St Mary's Church, Chigwell, where he is buried.

Harsnett and Demons

Harsnett is also noted for his skeptical attitude towards demons and witchcraft. As the chaplain to Bishop Bankroft, Harsnett was commissioned to write a treatise condemning the 1590's exorcisms of John Darrell. Darrell was a puritan minister who performed a series of public exorcisms in the English midlands. Eventually, the exorcisms caused such a disturbance that they attracted the attention of Anglican authoritites in London. Harsnett's A Survey of Certain Dialogical Discourses was a polemical piece intended to discredit Darrell's puritan agenda. It was drafted as a piece of political propaganda, but it also genuinely questioned the belief in demons. Harsnett sought natural explanations for supposedly supernatural phenomena.

In 1603, he wrote another book, Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, which condemned exorcisms performed by Roman Catholic priests in the 1580's. Shakespeare used this book as a source, pulling words and phrases when writing the play King Lear. As a member of England's religious authority, Harsnett's skeptical attitudes set important precedents for English policy. He may have contributed to the relative lack of witch hunts in England, compared to other countries.