rich rectory of Petworth in Sussex. He was residing at his episcopal palace when Chichester surrendered to the parliament in 1643. In his will be complains that his library was seized 'contrary to the condicõn and contracte of the Generall and Counsell of warre at the taking of that Citie,' Walker (Sufferings of the Clergy, ii. 63) declares that he was 'most Barbarously Treated,' He was deprived of the rectory of Petworth, which was given by parliament to Francis Cheynell, and by a resolution of the House of Commons, 27 June 1643, his estates were ordered to be forthwith sequestrated, a petition for delay being rejected on 3 Oct. From 1643 to 1651 he lived in the house of his brother-in-law, Sir Richard Hobart of Langley, Buckinghamshire. In 1649 he published on elegy on Charles I, dated 'from my sad Retirement, March 11, 1648-9;' another elegy,' A Deepe Groane . . . by D. H. K.,' has been doubtfully assigned to him. 'The Psalmes of David. . . , To be sung after the Old Tunes vsed in ye Churches,' appeared in 1651; 2nd edit. 1671.
Shortly afterwards King retired to Ritchings, near Langley, the residence of Lady Salter (supposed to be the sister of Bishop Duppa), where other members of the King family and John Hales of Eton found refuge. In 1657 his scattered 'Poems,' 8vo, were collected. The unsold copies were reissued in 1664 with a new title-page and some additional elegies. In the edition of 1700 the additional elegies were cancelled, and the volume was entitled 'Ben Jonson's Poems, Paradoxes, and Sonnets.' Some of the poems had been published before 1657. The elegy on Gustavus Adolphus appeared in the 'Swedish Intelligencer,' pt. iii. 1633; another on Donne was prefixed to Donne's 'Poems,' 1633; another on Ben Jonson was contributed to 'Jonsonus Virbius,' 1638; and the epistle to George Sandys was printed in 1638. King did not prepare the volume for publication, and some of the poems appear not to belong to him. The verses on Lord Dorset's death are found in Bishop Corbet's poems. 'My Midnight Meditation' is ascribed on early manuscript authority to his brother Dr. John King, and two pieces are found among the poems attributed (often wrongly) to the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyard. A poem beginning 'Like to the falling of a star' is found among Francis Beaumont's poems; but probably it belongs neither to Beaumont nor King. The additional poems in the edition of 1664 include elegies on the Earl of Essex, Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, and Lady Stanhope, King's best poem is his elegy on his wife.
In 1659 King was engaged in negotiations for supplying the vacant bishoprics, and in the next year returned to Chichester. Wood says that at the Restoration he 'became discontented, as I have heard, and a favourer thereupon of the presbyterians in his diocese.' On 20 May 1661, 'being the happy day of his majesties inauguration and birth,' he preached a sermon (published in 1661, 4to) at Whitehall, and on 24 April 1662 he delivered an impressive funeral sermon (published in 1662, 4to) on Bishop Duppa at Westminster Abbey. In 1662 he published 'Articles of Visitation and Enqiury,' 4to; in 1663 'A Sermon preached at Lewis in the Diocese of Chichester, Oct. 8, 1663;' and in 1664-6 'A Sermon preached the 30th of January at Whitehall, 1664.' His letter to Izaak Walton was printed before Walton's 'Life of Hooker,' 1665.
King died at Chichester 30 Sept. 1669, and was buried in the cathedral, where the widow of his son John erected a monument to his memory and that of her husband. His second son, Henry, died 21 Feb. 1668-9; his eldest son, John, died 10 March 1670-1. Izaak Walton (Life of Donne) describes King as 'a man generally known by the clergy of this nation, and as generally noted for his obliging nature,' and Wood (Athenae, ed. Bliss, iii. 842) declares that he was 'the epitome of all honours, virtues, and generous nobleness, and a person never to be forgotten by his tenants and by the poor.' Vicars maliciously styles him 'a proud prelate' and 'a most pragmatical malignant.'
King was among the contributors to 'Justa Oxoniensiae,' 1613, on the death of Henry, prince of Wales; 'Epithalamia,' 1613, on the marriage of Princess Elizabeth; 'Justa Funebria Ptolemaei Oxonienis, Thomas Bodleii Equitis Aurati,' 1613-14; 'Jacobi Ara,' 1617; 'Annae Funebria Sacra,' 1619; and 'Parentalia Jacobo,' 1625. In 1843 the late Archdeacon Hannah edited King's 'Poems and Psalms,' with an elaborate biographical notice. King's portrait hangs in Christ Church hall.
[Biographical notice by J. Hannah before King's Poems and Psalms,1843; Welch's Alumni Westmonasterienses.]
KING, HUMPHREY (fl. 1613), verse-writer, a seller of tobacco in London, was author of ‘An Halfe-penny-worth of Wit, in a Pennyworth of Paper. Or, The Hermites Tale. The third impression,’ London, 1613, 4to, pp. 48. No earlier edition is known, but it must have been printed some years previously. ‘Robin the Devil his Two Penniworth of Wit in Half a Penniworth of Paper. By Robert Lee, a famous fencer of London, alias Robin the Devil’ (London, for
