Robert Abbot, Bishop of Salisbury

Robert Abbot (1560–1617) was an Anglican clergyman and academic, known as a polemical writer. He served as Master of Balliol College, Oxford, Regius Professor of Divinity, and Bishop of Salisbury from 1615. Among his four younger brothers, George became Archbishop of Canterbury and Maurice became Lord Mayor of London.

He was born in Guildford, the elder brother of George Abbot the future archbishop, and shared the same course of education. He early distinguished himself as a preacher, and a sermon which he preached at Paul's Cross gained for him the living of Bingham, Nottinghamshire, to which he was presented by John Stanhope.

King James appointed Abbot one of the chaplains in ordinary. In 1609, he was elected master of Balliol College. In 1613 he became Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and attacked the writings of Petrus Bertius, a Dutch Remonstrant, on the topic of falling from grace. Subsequently he made a broader attack based on orthodox Calvinism and Augustine of Hippo on the spreading ideas of Jacobus Arminius. In 1615 he attacked John Howson and William Laud, implying Catholic sympathies, and wrapping in those terms the further implication that Laud was Arminian. Howson retorted that the Abbot brothers were Puritans. In speaking of secret methods by which certain persons were attempting to undermine the Protestant Reformation, Abbot was clearly referencing Laud, who was present for the lecture. Laud, stung, wrote to his friend, Richard Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, complaining that, "he was fain to sit patiently at the rehearsal of this sermon, though abused almost an hour together, being pointed at as he sat," and asking whether he ought to take public notice of the insult.

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