James Ussher
1581–1656
Archbishop of Armagh; loyalist who would not sit.
Biography
The greatest scholar of the seventeenth-century British church — author of *Annales Veteris Testamenti* (1650) with its 4004 BC creation date, *De Romanae Ecclesiae Symbolo*, and the Irish Articles of 1615 that fed into the Westminster Confession. Ussher was named to the Assembly but refused to attend out of loyalty to Charles I, remaining in royalist Oxford. He was the most prominent absent figure the Assembly never had.
Principal works
- Annales Veteris Testamenti (1650)
- A Body of Divinity (1645)
- The Reduction of Episcopacie (1656 posthum.)
Named in the ordinance
The 1643 ordinance that summoned the Assembly named some 121 divines. A number — chiefly episcopalians and royalists who heeded the King's proclamation forbidding the Assembly — never took their seats or sat only briefly; a few were later expelled. They are listed here for completeness as part of the originally-summoned roster.