The “Staffordshire Clergy” who achieved such unfortunate prominence in the disputes surrounding the Catholic Relief Acts have been alternately condemned as the irresponsible ene1nies of authority and upheld as the victims of those defenders of the Church who “have wrought incalculable mischief” by confusing “heterodoxy with immorality, a misinformed mind with a malicious will”.

John King, Bishop of London, died on Good Friday, 30th March, 1621: “The next day at night he was buried priuately in Paules”. Shortly afterwards, as John Chamberlain tells us in a letter to a friend, it was commonly reported among Catholics that he had died a Catholic: “Wold you thincke the papists were so impudent as to publish that the late bishop of London died a Romish Catholike, and yt goes for current among them, of wch there is no manner of ground nor shadow but that out of charitie (both before and in his sicknes) he relieued some priests that were in prison and want: but this is one of their vsuall courses wch thay haue learned of the father of lies’. And before the year was out the claim had been made and answered in print: the affair, in short, rose to such proportions that Chamberlain's question, however rhetorical in intent, seems to deserve some attempt at an answer. Was it papist impudence? or is there any reason to suppose that Bishop King did die professing himself a Catholic?