55. JEREMIAH RADCLIFFE, D.D
Being appointed chaplain to the royal favorite, Bishop Montague, he was by that prelate made Archdeacon of Taunton in 1615, and also Prebendary of Wells. The King next year presented him to the rectory of Much-Munden in Hertfordshire; and also appointed him one of his chaplains. In 1617, the excellent Dr. Toby Mathew, archbishop of York, made him Prebendary of Ampleford in the cathedral church of York; and this stall Dr. Ward retained as long as he lived.
King James sent him, in 1618, to the Synod of Dort, in Holland, together with Bishops Carleton, Davenant, and Hall; as the four divines most able and meet to represent the Church of England, at that famous Council. After a while Dr. Goad, a powerful divine and chaplain to Dr. Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent in the place of Dr. Hall, recalled at his own request, on account of sickness. The English delegates were treated with the highest consideration; and having exerted a very happy influence in the Synod, returned with great honor to their own country, after six or eight months' absence. The sittings of the Synod began November 3d, 1618, and ended April 29th of the next year. During all this time, the States General of Holland allowed the British envoys ten pounds sterling each day; and, at their departure, gave them two hundred pounds to bear their expenses; and also to each of them a splendid gold medal, representing the Synod in session.
At this celebrated ecclesiastical council, Walter Balcanqual, B. D., Fellow of Pembroke Hall, and afterwards Master of the Savoy, by order of King James, represented the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. There were also, besides the members from the Dutch provinces, delegates present from Hesse, the Palatinate, Bremen, and Switzerland, all of whose churches practised the Presbyterian form of discipline and government. The Church of England, through its "supreme head," acknowledged and communed with all these as true churches of the Lord Jesus Christ, —sitting and acting with them, by its delegated theologians, in a solemn ecclesiastical assembly. Surely the spirit of the Anglican Church in those days was widely different from what is manifested now.