"Twenty years a presbyter": Richard Bancroft, the Scottish Church, and the Hookerian vision

From The History of the Church of Scotland (published posthumously in 1655) by John Spottiswoode, Archbishop of St. Andrews 1618-39, the account of an incident at the episcopal consecration of the author and two other Scottish clerics in 1610.  James VI/I had restored bishoprics to the Church of Scotland but - as the King himself stated (also quoted by Spottiswoode) - "the adversaries mouths be stopped, who said that he did take upon him to create Bishops, and bestow Spiritual Offices, which he never did nor would he presume to do, acknowledging that authority to belong to Christ alone, and those he had authorized with his power". 

James therefore directed the Bishops of London, Ely, and Bath to consecrate the Scotch clerics, the absence of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York providing assurance that the Church of England was not claiming jurisdiction over the Church of Scotland. That said, the Archbishop of Canterbury - Richard Bancroft - did crucially intervene in the preparations for the consecration:

A question in the mean time was moved by Dr. Andrews Bishop of Ely touching the Consecration of the Scottish Bishops, who, as he said, must first be ordained Presbyters, as having received no Ordination from a Bishop. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Bancroft, who was by, maintained, That thereof there was no necessity, seeing where Bishops could not be had, the Ordination given by the Presbyters must be esteemed lawful; otherwise that it might be doubted if there were any lawful vocation in most of the Reformed Churches. This applauded to by the other Bishops, Ely acquiesced, and at the day and in the place appointed the three Scottish Bishops were consecrated.

That is was Bancroft who defended the validity of the presbyteral orders of the Scots is not without great significance. As Charles Prior notes in his Defining the Jacobean Church (2005), Bancroft was the "architect" of Jacobean Conformity, vigorously defending the Church of England's episcopal polity against the claims of Scottish Presbyterianism. As he had declared in his famous defence of Conformity in the 1588 St. Paul's Cross sermon, "you must know that the church of God ever since the apostles times, hath distributed the ecclesiasticall ministerie principallie into these three parts, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons". 

Here, in other words, was an outworking of the Hookerian vision: a robust commitment to episcopal polity as apostolic, restoring episcopacy when possible to non-episcopal churches, while yet maintaining a generous affirmation of the presbyteral ministry in those churches. What is more, it was this Hookerian vision - rather than Andrewes' suggestion - which shaped both Laudian attitudes and the post-1660 High Church tradition until the end of the 'long 18th century'. 

When Spottiswoode was buried in Westminster Abbey - with, as his fellow Laudian Brian Duppa recorded, "the solemn Rites of the English Church" - his coffin carried an inscription which also pointed to this Hookerian vision.  "XX. annos Presbyter" is how it describes his ministry prior to being consecrated bishop.