Lancelot Andrewes (1555 – 25 September 1626) was an English bishop and scholar, who held high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.

Andrewes was born in 1555 near All Hallows, Barking, by the Tower of London, of an ancient Suffolk family later domiciled at Chichester Hall, at Rawreth in Essex; his father, Thomas, was master of Trinity House.

[2] In 1576 he was elected fellow of Pembroke College; on 11 June 1580 he was ordained a priest by William Chaderton, Bishop of Chester,[3] and in 1581 was incorporated Master of Arts (MA) at Oxford.

Once a year he would spend a month with his parents and, during this vacation, he would find a master from whom he would learn a language of which he had no previous knowledge.

In a sermon (during Easter week) on 10 April 1588, he stoutly vindicated the Reformed character of the Church of England against the claims of Roman Catholicism and adduced John Calvin as a new writer, with lavish praise and affection.

He argued for soteriological synergism, using Lot's wife as a picture that one's salvation is not secure post-conversion apart from an ongoing and freely chosen cooperation with God's saving grace.

On 4 March 1590, as a chaplain of Elizabeth I, he preached before her an outspoken sermon and, in October that year, gave his introductory lecture at St Paul's, undertaking to comment on the first four chapters of the Book of Genesis.

Andrewes liked to move among the people, yet found time to join a society of antiquaries, of which Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, Burghley, Arundel, the Herberts, Saville, John Stow and William Camden were members.

Andrewes claimed that the plague was caused by "inventions" like "new meats in diet" and "new fashions in apparel" that had roused the wrath of God.

Andrewes' name is the first on the list of divines appointed to compile the Authorized Version of the Bible, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611.

[13] In 1609 he published Tortura Torti, a learned work which grew out of the Gunpowder Plot controversy and was written in answer to Bellarmine's Matthaeus Tortus, which attacked James I's book on the oath of allegiance.

He was made dean of the Chapel Royal and translated (by the confirmation of his election to that see in February 1619)[12] to Winchester, a diocese that he administered with great success.

A good summary of his position is found in his First Answer to Cardinal Perron, who had challenged James I's use of the title "Catholic".

As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously investigate, any more than in the Incarnation of Christ we ask how the human is united to the divine nature in One Person.

His services to his church have been summed up thus: (1) he has a keen sense of the proportion of the faith and maintains a clear distinction between what is fundamental, needing ecclesiastical commands, and subsidiary, needing only ecclesiastical guidance and suggestion; (2) as distinguished from the earlier protesting standpoint, e.g. of the Thirty-nine Articles, he emphasised a positive and constructive statement of the Anglican position.

His best-known work is the Preces Privatae or Private Prayers, edited by Alexander Whyte (1896),[15] which has widespread appeal and has remained in print since renewed interest in Andrewes developed in the 19th century.

Andrewes was considered, next to James Ussher, to be the most learned churchman of his day, and enjoyed a great reputation as an eloquent and impassioned preacher, but the stiffness and artificiality of his style render his sermons unsuited to modern taste.

In his 1997 novel Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut suggested that Andrewes was "the greatest writer in the English language", citing as proof the first few verses of the 23rd Psalm.

His translation work has also led him to appear as a character in three plays dealing with the King James Bible, Howard Brenton's Anne Boleyn (2010), Jonathan Holmes' Into Thy Hands (2011) and David Edgar's Written on the Heart (2011).

This was in fact the ancient version of the mortarboard before the top square was stiffened and the tump replaced by a tassel and button.