This record of the mourners at Archbishop Abbot’s funeral procession is likely to have been made by a herald of the College of Arms. The last decade of Abbot’s life had been overshadowed by his melancholy after accidentally killing a deer keeper while hunting in 1621, and the ascendancy of William Laud under Charles I. Abbot had died at Croydon Palace on 4 August 1633, with the funeral taking place on 3 September though he was buried in his birthplace of Guildford.

MS 3153 f. 1r

Among those listed are Abbot’s secretary William Baker, whom he called 'as honest a man as ever served any master' and in his will commissioned him to make a new catalogue of his library. Baker had previously been one of the compilers of Archbishop Bancroft's foundation catalogue, both catalogues survive at Lambeth in two copies. The most prominent clergy in attendance were John Bowle, Bishop of Rochester who preached the funeral sermon and the chief mourner Laud, Bishop of London and Abbot’s successor.

MS 3153 f. 2v

The manuscript has been altered by a second hand, correcting changes in the order of the procession. For example, Sir Dudley Digges was originally placed alongside Laud with Sir Henry Marten, Dean of the Arches but appears to have been replaced by Sir Charles Caesar, Master of the Faculties. 

MS 3153 f. 2v

This manuscript was formerly owned by the great nineteenth-century collector Sir Thomas Phillipps.

MS 3153 ff. 1v-2r

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