# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Downing, Calybute

​DOWNING, CALYBUTE (1606–1644), divine, son of Calybute Downing of Sherrington in Gloucestershire, and of Ann, daughter of Edmund Hoogan of Hackney, was born in 1606, became a commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1623, and proceeded B. A. in 1626; he then left Oxford and would seem to have been curate at Quainton, Buckinghamshire, where on 2 Dec. 1627 he married Margaret, the daughter of Richard Brett, D.D. [q. v.], rector of Quainton. Entries of the death of Downing's mother in 1630, and of the births of a son and three daughters in 1628-30-1 and 1636, are in the register at Quainton. In 1630, having entered at Peterhouse, Cambridge, he proceeded M.A., and in 1637 LL. D. In 1632 he was made rector of Ickford, Buckinghamshire, and about the same time of West Ilsley, Berkshire, and was an unsuccessful competitor against Dr Gilbert Sheldon for the wardenship of All Souls' College, Oxford. He published at Oxford in 1632 'A Discourse of the State Ecclesiastical of this Kingdom in relation to the Civil;' this he dedicates to William, earl of Salisbury, signing himself 'Your observant Chaplaine.' A second edition appeared in 1634. In 1637 he resigned West Ilsley for the vicarage of Hackney, London. According to Wood, he 'was a great suitor to be chaplain to Thomas, earl of Strafford, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, thinking that employment the readiest way to be a bishop; and whilst he had hopes of that preferment, he writ stoutly in justification of that calling;' but by 1640 he had changed his views, and in a sermon preached before the Artillery Company of London on 1 Sept. of that year he affirmed that for defence of religion and reformation of the church it was lawful to take up arms against the king. 'A Letter from Mercurius Civicus to Mercurius Rusticus,' published in 1643, declares that Downing was instigated on this occasion by the puritan leaders 'to feele the pulse of the Citty,' and that after preaching the sermon he retired privately to the house of the Earl of Warwick at Little Lees, Essex, 'the common randevous of all schysmaticall preachers.' Wood adds that he became chaplain to Lord Robartes's regiment in the Earl of Essex's army. On 31 Aug. 1642 he preached a fast sermon before the House of Commons, in consequence of an order made in the previous July; and on 20 June 1643 he was appointed by parliament one of the licensers of books of divinity. Wood states further that in 1643 he took the covenant and was made one of the assembly of divines, but left them and sided with the independents. He resigned Hackney in 1643, and died suddenly in 1644. Besides the treatise and sermons already mentioned, he published: 1. 'A Discoverie of the False Grounds the Bavarian party have layd, to settle their own Faction and to shake the Peace of the Empire, considered in the Case of the Deteinure of the Prince Elector Palatine, his Dignities and Dominions, with a Discourse upon the Interest of England in that Cause,' 1641; this is dedicated to the House of Commons. 2. 'Considerations towards a Peaceable Reformation in Matters Ecclesiastical,' 1641. 3. 'The Cleere Antithesis, or Diametrall Opposition betweene Presbytery and Prelacy; wherein is apparently demonstrated whether Government be most consonant and agreeable to the Word of God,' 1644.
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