(Welsh, Alumni Westmonasterienses, p. 83). He graduated B.A. in 1618, and proceeded M.A. in 1621, and D.D. in 1642. Remaining at Oxford, he made many friends, among whom were Henry Hammond [q. v.], Robert Sanderson [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Lincoln, William Chillingworth [q. v.], Gilbert Sheldon [q. v.], afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, Lucius Gary, afterwards second viscount Falkland [q. v.], at whose house at Great Tew, Oxfordshire, he was a frequent guest, and, above all, of Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon. His remarkably cultured mind, his witty conversation, and his high moral character won him the regard and admiration of men of taste and learning. It is related that Edmund Waller the poet, when one day sitting with Chillingworth. Falkland, and others, heard that some one was arrested in the street below, found that it was 'one of Jonson's sons,' George Morley, and at once paid the debt of 100l., on condition that Morley would stay with him. Morley constantly visited him at his house in Buckinghamshire, and Waller used to declare that it was from him that he learned to love the ancient poets (Life of Waller, pp. 8, 9, affixed to Works). Morley's arrest must probably have arisen out of the debts which his father had incurred. He was a Calvinist, though at the same time a thorough churchman. Being once asked, apparently about 1635, what the Arminians held, he answered that they held all the best bishoprics and deaneries in England. Neither his opinions nor his wit pleased Laud, who had a prejudice against him, and his friendship with John Hampden (1594-1643) [q. v.], Arthur Goodwin [q. v.], and others of the same views, made some suspect that he was no true friend to the church (Clarendon, Life, i. 50). He was for a time chaplain to Robert Dormer, earl of Carnarvon [q. v.], and was in 1640 presented to the sinecure rectory of Hartfield, Sussex. His friend Hyde evidently forwarded his interests, and in 1641 [see under Hyde for significance of date] he was made a canon of Christ Church, having previously been appointed one of the king's chaplains, gave his first year's stipend to help the king in his war [see under Charles I], and exchanged his sinecure for the rectory, with cure, of Mildenhall, Wiltshire.
He was appointed in 1642 to preach before the House of Commons, but his sermon was so little to the members' liking that they refrained from paying him the usual compliment of requesting him to print it (Wood). Nevertheless he was appointed by both houses one of the assembly of divines, but he never attended any of its meetings, and served the king by all means in his power. In obedience to the king's direction he took a prominent part in the resistance of the university of Oxford to the parliamentary visitation of 1647, and served on the delegacy appointed by convocation to manage the opposition (Burrows, Visitors' Register, Pref. lxiii ; Wood). When in the autumn the second attempt at visitation was resisted, and the heads of houses were summoned to appear before the committee of the two houses, Morley was selected to instruct counsel on their behalf. He was deprived of his canonry and his rectoiy. He resisted, and was finally ejected in the spring of 1648. In a letter to Whitelocke, which appears in Whitelocke's 'Memorials' under May 1647, he speaks of his canonry as all his subsistence (Memorials, ii. 150). It is said that he might have avoided ejectment if he would have promised to abstain from opposition to the visitors, and that he suffered a short imprisonment on account of it (Wood ; Walker). In the summer of 1647 he attended the king as one of his chaplains at Newmarket (Clarendon, History, x. 93). and is said to have taken part in the Newport negotiations in the autumn of 1648 (Wood). In March 1649 he attended his friend, Arthur Capel, lord Capel [q. v.], after his sentence, and accompanied him to the foot of the scaffold (ib. xi. 264).
Morley then left England, went to the court of Charles II at St. Germains, and while in Paris officiated in the chapel of Sir Richard Browne (1605-1683) [q. v.] (Evelyn, Diary, i. 254, 271 n.) Having accompanied the king to Breda, he preached before him on the eve of Charles's departure for Scotland in 1650. Hyde wrote to Lady Morton [see under Douglas, William, seventh or eighth Earl of Morton], speaking of the comfort that Morley would be to her (Col. of Clarendon Papers, ii. 21). At first the royalists at the Hague, where he remained after the king's departure, seem to have looked upon him with some coldness, believing that he had presbyterian leanings, and Hyde wrote again to Lady Morton to correct this impression (ib. p. 65). Some of them, however, immediately recognised his value, Lady Elizabeth Thynne being one of 'his elect ladies;' he read prayers twice a day, and performed the other offices of the church for the English royalists in every place at which he stayed during his exile, and was soon regarded as their most prominent and useful clergyman, being referred to somewhat later in correspondence as 'the honest doctor' (ib. passim ; Nicholas Papers, i. 208 ; Wood). He gratuitously acted as chaplain to Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, and also served Lady Frances Hyde
