ANDREWES, LANCELOT. - English theologian and Anglican bishop of Winchester, b. in 1555, d. on 6 September 1626. A pupil of Pembroke College, Cambridge, he received Anglican Orders in 1582 and immediately distinguished himself as a skilled controversialist. Queen Elizabeth made him dean of Westminster (1601), and James I, the theologian-king, made great use of him for the drafting of his works against Catholic doctrines. Of his sermons, the eight that deal with fasting, preached in two successive Lents in the presence of Elizabeth and then of James I, deserve to be remembered. When he was questioned about the "Lambeth articles," which aimed to introduce into the Anglican church Calvin's decrees on predestination, he succeeded in having them modified in a less intransigent sense. His name also stands at the head of the list of theologians who worked on the "authorized version" of the Bible: Biblia ex hebraeo et graeco in anglicum converso sermonem jussu et auspiciis Jacobi I, Magnae Britanniae Regis, London 1612. The king wished to show him his gratitude for the services rendered and for his zeal in defending the Anglican church, by making him bishop, first of Chichester (1605), then of Ely (1609) and finally of Winchester (1619); and he came close to being preferred to Abbot (v.) for the see of Canterbury. He was a person of great culture and erudition - even his adversaries readily acknowledge it - simple and modest, wholly intent on the triumph of his Church, upright and far removed from any flattery, even toward sovereigns.
In his lifetime he published only two works, both intended to defend James I in his controversy with St. Robert Bellarmine: Tortura Torti, sive ad Matthaei Torti librum responsio, London 1609, with which, at the king's commission, he replied to the writing that Bellarmine had published under the name of his secretary Matteo Torto, condemning the oath imposed by James I on Catholics; and Responsio ad Apologiam card. Bellarmino, London 1610, to counter the cardinal's reply to the first work. The A., who was the most perfect type of the theologian of the High Church, defends in them the Anglican doctrine against the supremacy of the Pope, and not only that; but he also attacks communion under one kind, the private Mass, the use of the Latin language in the liturgy, etc. The other works, left in manuscript, sermons, manuals of devotion, questions of theology, were published after his death, and the collection was reprinted at Oxford, beginning in 1841, in the Library of Anglo-catholic Theology.