Harvard in 1872, and that of D.D. from Edinburgh in 1884. . He
died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 21st of March 1884.
See S. J. Barrows, Ezra Abbot (Cambridge, Mass., 1884).
ABBOT, GEORGE (1562-1633), English divine, archbishop of
Canterbury, was born on the 19th of October 1562, at Guildford in
Surrey, where his father was a cloth-worker. He studied, and
then taught, at Balliol College, Oxford, was chosen master of
University College in 1597, and appointed dean of Winchester in
1600. He was three times vice-chancellor of the university,
and took a leading part in preparing the authorized version
of the New Testament. In 1608 he went to Scotland with the
earl of Dunbar to arrange for a union between the churches
of England and Scotland. He so pleased the king (James
I.) in this affair that he was made bishop of Lichfield and
Coventry in 1609, was translated to the see of London a month
afterwards, and in less than a year was raised to that of
Canterbury. His puritan instincts frequently led him not
only into harsh treatment of Roman Catholics, but also into
courageous resistance to the royal will, e.g. when he
opposed the scandalous divorce suit of the Lady Frances Howard
against the earl of Essex, and again in 1618 when, at Croydon,
he forbade the reading of the declaration permitting Sunday
sports. He was naturally, therefore, a promoter of the match
between the elector palatine and the Princess Elizabeth,
and a firm opponent of the projected marriage of the prince
of Wales with the infanta of Spain. This policy brought
upon him the hatred of Laud (with whom he had previously
come into collision at Oxford) and the court, though the
king himself never forsook him. In 1622, while hunting in
Lord Zouch's park at Bramshill, Hampshire, a bolt from his
cross-bow aimed at a deer happened to strike one of the
keepers, who died within an hour, and Abbot was so greatly
distressed by the event that he fell into a state of settled
melancholy. His enemies maintained that the fatal issue of
this accident disqualified him for his office, and argued
that, though the homicide was involuntary, the sport of
hunting which had led to it was one in which no clerical
person could lawfully indulge. The king had to refer the
matter to a commission of ten, though he said that ``an angel
might have miscarried after this sort.'' The commission was
equally divided, and the king gave a casting vote in the
archbishop's favour, though signing also a formal pardon or
dispensation. After this the archbishop seldom appeared
at the council, chiefly on account of his infirmities. He
attended the king constantly, however, in his last illness,
and performed the ceremony of the coronation of Charles I.
His refusal to license the assize sermon preached by Dr Robert
Sibthorp at Northampton on the 22nd of February 1626-1627, in
which cheerful obedience was urged to the king's demand for a
general loan, and the duty proclaimed of absolute non-resistance
even to the most arbitrary royal commands, led Charles to
deprive him of his functions as primate, putting them in
commission. The need of summoning parliament, however,
soon brought about a nominal restoration of the archbishop's
powers. His presence being unwelcome at court, he lived
from that time in retirement, leaving Laud and his party in
undisputed ascendancy. He died at Croydon on the 5th of August
1633, and was buried at Guildford, his native place, where
he had endowed a hospital with lands to the value of L. 300 a
year. Abbot was a conscientious prelate, though narrow in view
and often harsh towards both separatists and Romanists. He
wrote a large number of works, the most interesting being his
discursive Exposition on the Prophet Jonah (1600), which was
reprinted in 1845. His Geography, or a Brief Description
of the Whole World (1599), passed through numerous editions.
The best account of him is in S. R. Gardiner's History of England.
ABBOT, GEORGE (1603-1648), English writer, known as ``The
Puritan,'' has been oddly and persistently mistaken for
others. He has been described as a clergyman, which he never
was, and as son of Sir Morris (or Maurice) Abbot, and his
writings accordingly entered in the bibliographical authorities
as by the nephew of the archbishop of Canterbury. One of the
sons of Sir Morris Abbot was, indeed, named George, and he
was a man of mark, but the more famous George Abbot was of a
different family altogether. He was son or grandson (it is
not clear which) of Sir Thomas Abbot, knight of Easington,
East Yorkshire, having been born there in 1603--1604,
his mother (or grandmother) being of the ancient house of
Pickering. Of his early life and training nothing is
known. He married a daughter of Colonel Purefoy of Caldecote,
Warwickshire, and as his monument, which may still be seen
in the church there, tells, he bravely held the manor house
against Princes Rupert and Maurice during the civil war. As
a layman, and nevertheless a theologian and scholar of rare
ripeness and critical ability, he holds an almost unique
place in the literature of the period. The terseness of his
Whole Booke of Job Paraphrased, or made easy for any to
understand (1640, 4to), contrasts favourably with the usual
prolixity of the Puritan expositors and commentators. His
Vindiciae Sabbathi (1641, 8vo) had a profound and lasting
influence in the long Sabbatarian controversy. His Brief
Notes upon the Whole Book of Psalms (1651, 4to), as its date
shows, was posthumous. He died on the 2nd of February 1648.
AUTHORITIES--MS.collections at Abbeyville for history of all
of the name of Abbot, by J. T. Abbot, Esq., F.S.A., Darlington;
Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1730 p. 1099; Wood's
Athenae (Bliss), ii.141, 594; Cox's Literature of the Sabbath.
ABBOT, ROBERT (1588?-1662?), English Puritan divine. Noted
as this worthy was in his own time, and representative in
various ways, he has often since been confounded with others,
e.g. Robert Abbot, bishop of Salisbury. He is also wrongly
described as a relative of Archbishop Abbot, from whom he
acknowledges very gratefully, in the first of his epistles
dedicatory of A Hand of Fellowship to Helpe Keepe out Sinne
and Antichrist (1623, 4to), that he had ``received all'' his
``worldly maintenance,'' as well as ``best earthly countenance',
and ``fatherly incouragements.', The worldly maintenance
was the presentation in 1616 to the vicarage of Cranbrook in
Kent. He had received his education at Cambridge, where he
proceeded M.A., and was afterwards incorporated at Oxford. In
1639, in the epistle to the reader of his most noticeable book
historically, his Triall of our Church-Forsakers, he tells
us, ``I have lived now, by God's gratious dispensation, above
fifty years, and in the place of my allotment two and twenty
full.'' The former date carries us back to 1588-1589, or
perhaps 1587-1588 ---the ``Armada'' year---as his birth-time;
the latter to 1616-1617 (ut supra). In his Bee Thankfull
London and her Sisters (1626), he describes himself as
formerly ``assistant to a reverend divine . . . now with
God,'' and the name on the margin is ``Master Haiward of Wool
Church (Dorset).'' This was doubtless previous to his going to
Cranbrook. Very remarkable and effective was Abbot's
ministry at Cranbrook, where his parishioners were as his
own ``sons and daughters'' to him. Yet, Puritan though he
was, he was extremely and often unfairly antagonistic to
Nonconformists. He remained at Cranbrook until 1643, when,
Parliament deciding against pluralities of ecclesiastical
offices, he chose the very inferior living of Southwick,
Hants, as between the one and the other. He afterwards
succeeded the ``extruded'' Udall of St Austin's, London,
where according to the Warning-piece he was still pastor in
1657. He disappears silently between 1657-1658 and 1662.
Robert Abbot's books are conspicuous amongst the productions
of his time by their terseness and variety. In addition to
those mentioned above he wrote Milk for Babes, or a Mother's
Catechism for her Children (1646), and A Christian Family
builded by God, or Directions for Governors of Families (1653).
AUTHORITIES.--.Brook's Puritans, iii. 182, 3; Walker's
Sufferings, ii. 183; Wood's Athenae (Bliss), i. 323;
Palmer's Nonconf. Mem. ii. 218, which confuses him most
oddly of all with one of the ejected ministers of 1662.
ABBOT, WILLIAM (1798--1843), English actor, was born in
Chelsea, and made his first appearance on the stage at Bath
in 1806, and his first London appearance in 1808. At Covent
Garden in 1813, in light comedy and melodrama, he made his
first decided success. He Was Pylades to Macready's Orestes
in Ambrose Philips's Distressed Mother when Macready made
his first appearance at that theatre (1816). He created the
parts of Appius Claudius in Sheridan Knowles's Virginius
(1820) and of Modus in his Hunchback (1832). In 1827 he
organized the company, including Macready and Miss Smithson,
which acted Shakespeare in Paris. On his return to London
he played Romeo to Fanny Kemble's Juliet (1830). Two of
Abbot's melodramas, The Youthful Days of Frederick the Great
(1817) and Swedish Patriotism (1819), were produced at
Covent Garden. He died in poverty at Baltimore, Maryland.
ABBOT (from the Hebrew ab, a father, through the Syriac
abba, Lat. abbas, gen. abbatis, O.E. abbad, fr. late
Lat. form abbad-em changed in 13th century under influence
of the Lat. form to abbat, used abternatively till the end
of the 17th century; Ger. Abt; Fr. abbe), the head and
chief governor of a community of monks, called also in the
East hegumenos or archimandrite. The title had its origin
in the monasteries of Syria, whence it spread through the
East, and soon became accepted generally in all languages as
the designation of the head of a monastery. At first it was
employed as a respectful title for any monk, as we learn from St
Jerome, who denounced the custom on the ground that Christ had
said, ``Call no man father on earth'' (in Epist. ad Gal.
iv. 6, in Matt. xxiii. 9), but it was soon restricted to the
superior. The name ``abbot,'' though general in the West,
was never universal. Among the Dominicans, Carmelites,
Augustinians, &c., the superior was called Praepositus,
``provost,'' and Prior; among the Franciscans, Custos,
``guardian''; and by the monks of Camaldoi, Major.
In Egypt, the first home of monasticism, the jurisdiction
of the abbot, or archimandrite, was but loosely defined.
Sometimes he ruled over only one community, sometimes over
several, each of which had its own abbot as well. Cassian
speaks of an abbot of the Thebaid who had 500 monks under
him, a number exceeded in other cases. By the rule of St
Benedict, which, until the reform of Cluny, was the norm
in the West, the abbot has jurisdiction over only one
community. The rule, as was inevitable, was subject to
frequent violations; but it was not until the foundation of
the Cluniac Order that the idea of a supreme abbot, exercising
jurisdiction over all the houses of an order, was definitely
recognized. New styles were devised to express this new
relation; thus the abbot of Monte Cassino was called abbas
abbatum, while the chiefs of other orders had the tities
abbas generails, or magister or minister generalis.
Monks, as a rule, were laymen, nor at the outset was the abbot
any exception. All orders of clergy, therefore, even the
``doorkeeper,', took precedence of him. For the reception
of the sacraments, and for other religious offices, the
