Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/218

 tried in vain to carry out the old system of compulsion; the churchwardens were remiss in their duties, and would not present for ecclesiastical offences. He was evidently not very rich, and wished for another see. Potter was one of the four bishops who, with Ussher, advised the king upon the attainder of Strafford on 9 May 1641, and, like Ussher, Williams, and Morton, took the popular side. Potter died in January 1641–2 in his lodgings in Covent Garden, and was buried apparently in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, then a chapel of ease to St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The opinions expressed by Hall and Lloyd show that he was a man of consistent views, and that he was both independent and pious. Potter married, on 21 Aug. 1615, Elizabeth, daughter of Walter Northcote of Crediton, and widow of Edward Yard of Churston-Ferrers, Devonshire; Walter Northcote was uncle to Sir John Northcote [q. v.] By his wife he had seven children at least; two of the daughters, ‘Handsome Mistress’ Grace and Amye, were celebrated by Herrick in the Hesperides. His only son Barnaby died in 1623. His widow died early in 1673. Potter published a sermon in 1623, and his visitation articles in 1629. Wood refers to some lectures on Genesis and Exodus, and on the beatitudes of St. Luke, also to a spital sermon; but these have not been preserved, and possibly were never printed.

[All the important facts as to Potter are collected in a pamphlet by Winslow Jones, esq.; Hutchinson's Cumberland, ii. 631.] 

POTTER, CHRISTOPHER (1591–1646), provost of Queen's College, Oxford, was born in Westmoreland in 1591. He was the nephew of Barnaby Potter [q. v.] He matriculated from Queen's on 11 July 1606, aged 15, having entered the college in the previous Easter term. He was elected taberdar (pauper puer) on 29 Oct. 1609. He graduated B.A. on 30 April 1610 and M.A. on 8 July 1613, became chaplain on 5 July 1613, and fellow on 22 March 1614-15. He was magister puerorum in 1620, and senior bursar in 1622; graduated B.D. and received a preacher's license on 9 March 1621, and proceeded D.D. on 17 Feb. 1627. He was in his early years a follower of the puritan provost Henry Airay, the opponent of Laud, and himself held a lectureship at Abingdon, 'where he was much resorted to for his edifying way of preaching ' (, Athenae, iii. 180). On his uncle's resignation of the headship of Queen's (17 June 1626), he was elected provost. He now attached himself to Laud, and was made chaplain in ordinary to Charles I. In the first year of his provostship, with the assistance of Sir Thomas Coventry, the Earl of Carlisle, and Sir George Goring, vice-chamberlain to the Queen, he obtained from the king, through an appeal to the queen, the advowson of three rectories and three vicarages in Hampshire for the college. He himself received the rectory of Strathfieldsaye in 1627, and after the death of William Cox (29 Jan. 1632) was made precentor of Chichester. He received the rectory of Bletchington, Oxfordshire, in 1631.

During Laud's chancellorship of the university, Potter was one of his most frequent correspondents. He applied himself diligently to the restoration of the academical habit and discipline (Crosfield's 'Diary' in 's Works, v. 17, 24). He did much to restore the adequate performance of the exercises for their degrees by members of his college, instituted expositions of the creed on Sundays in chapel and English sermons on Thursdays, and removed from the college on at least two occasions members of the foundation whose conduct gave cause of scandal. In 1631, on the death of Dr. Rawlinson, principal of St. Edmund Hall, he asserted the rights of his college against the claim of the chancellor to nominate a principal. Laud admitted and confirmed the right (Works, v. 35-6, vi. 291, 294). On the acceptance of the new statutes by the university in 1636, Potter signed them with the special note 'salvo jure collegii praedicti ad aulam S. Edmundi' (Colleges of Oxford, ed. Clark, p. 138; and, Laudian Statutes, p. 1), and he issued a special protestation reaffirming the college rights, as there was no recognition of them in the new university statutes (in 's Works, v. 133-4). He had now attracted the notice of puritans as a prominent Arminian, and was attacked in a violent sermon written under the influence probably of Dr. Prideaux (ib. v. 49). He was also engaged in the Roman catholic controversy. He answered the work of the Jesuit Knott (Matthew Wilson), 'Charity Mistaken,' by the king's command in a pamphlet, 'Want of Charity justly charged on all such Romanists as dare affirm that Protestancy destroyeth Salvation' (Oxford, 1633). Potter takes much the same line as Laud had taken in his reply to Fisher. A second edition (London, 1634) was soon called for, and Laud revised the book (ib. vi. 326). The alterations he suggested formed one of the charges brought against him at his trial (, Canterburies Doome, pp. 251-2;, Works, iv.