At this date Dr Primerose had not received preferment at court. It was Charles who was his great patron. It is doubtful whether either of the above-mentioned brochures was helpful to his advancement. His own account (in a dedicatory epistle to one of his books) is that Sir James Fullerton introduced him to the new king, and thus paved the way for his appointment as one of the chaplains to King Charles I. His pastoral discourses and writings were creditable to him. In 1624 (October 7) he had preached a fast-day sermon, which was printed in 1625 with the title:— “The Christian Man’s Tears and Christ’s Comforts.” In the same year he published a volume of nine sermons, entitled, “The Righteous Man’s Tears and the Lord’s Deliverance.” In the following year appeared his best publication, “The Table of the Lord, whereof — 1. The Whole Service is the Living Bread; 2. The Guests — any man; 3. The Mouth to eate — Faith onely.” This valuable little volume is made up of two sermons, of which the first was preached at Whitehall to the King’s House on the Communion day, 3rd July 1625; and the second was preached at “Otlans” “before the Kings Majestie,” 12th July 1625. The dedicatory epistle is addressed to “the Right Honourable Sir James Fowlerton, First Gentleman of his Majestie’s Bedchamber,” &c. On 28th July 1628, Dr. Primerose was installed as Canon of Windsor.
This was a disastrous year to the Protestants of France. On October 30th, La Rochelle surrendered to Richelieu after a siege of nearly fifteen months. The Pope, Urban VIII., wrote a coarse and jubilant letter to Louis XIII., dated 28th November 1628. Our Bishop Hall replied in a letter entitled, “Inurbanitati Pontificiae Responsio Jos. Exoniensis,” dedicated “Amico mihi plurimum colendo Do. Gilberto Primrosio, S. Theol. Professori, Ecclesiae Gallicae Londinensis Pastori, Regiae Mati. a sacris.” This epistle called forth a reply, “Reverendo in Christo Patri viro incomparabili Josepho Hal, Episcopo Exoniensi, Gilbertus Primirosius s.p.D.” The Pontifical “Breeve” and the above-named rejoinders were printed in 1629.
There was one religious subject in which King Charles, like his father, unhappily interested himself, namely, the observance of the Sabbath. To recommend the Sunday Book of Sports to the frequenters of taverns was easy; but it was difficult to fit it and similar secularizations of the Lord’s Day into a religious theory. As to the day of sacred rest, the problem for courtly divines in the days of the Royal Stuarts was to find the minimum of self-denial for the rich, and the maximum of work for the poor, which could be plausibly defended by a lover of the Gospel. Before the year 1633, David Primerose of Rouen seems to have communicated with his father concerning the possibility of solving the problem. The doctor says —
“I wrote to my sonne, preacher of the gospell at Rouen, desiring him to set downe in a paper (distinctly and clearely), his opinions concerning the Sabbath, with the confirmation thereof by such arguments which hee should think most pregnant, and a solide refutation of the contrary arguments — which he did accordingly, but in the French tongue as writing onely out of a dutifull affection to condescend to my desire” — “I kept it by me three yeeres,” — also “the additions which he sent me at divers times afterwards.”
Unable to obtain a translator, the Canon undertook the work himself; and a quarto volume appeared, entitled: “A Treatise of the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day, distinguished into foure parts. Wherein is declared both the nature, originall, and observation as well of the one under the Old as of the other under the New Testament. Written in French by David Primerose, Batchelour in Divinitie in the University of Oxford, and Minister of the Gospell in the Protestant Church of Rouen. Englished out of his French Manuscript by his Father, G.P., D.D. London, 1636.”
Dr Primerose and Mr Bulteel were the acknowledged leaders of the French Protestant refugees. The former resided in “Chiswell Street, near the Artillery Yard, in the suburbs of London.” The doctor had been married in France, his first wife being the mother of his children; he married secondly, 14th December 1637, in Threadneedle Street, Jeanne Hersey, widow of Monsieur Aurelius (probably Abraham Aurelius, his predecessor in the pastorate); thirdly, on 21st September 1641, Louise de Lobel, a native of Antwerp, his third wife having him as her third husband. He died in 1642, probably in November or December (the patent for appointing his successor in the canonry of Windsor being dated December 27). I present my readers with the following fragment of a pedigree:—
