CHAP. suffer himself to be shut out of that library, [however IV. highly he esteemed the place,] for the sake of so worthy Anno 1552. a man to be let into it. This was in January 1550.

Cheke falls

sick.

It had been a very crazy time in England by reason of dangerously the sweating sickness that raged the last year, and by fevers before and after that, whereby very many persons were cut off, and some escaped very hardly, after that they had been brought even to the gates of death: and as Haddon, Cheke's dear friend, was one of these the last year, so Cheke himself must have his turn this. His distemper (under which he laboured in May) brought him exceeding low. The King and all good men were extraordinarily concerned for him, knowing how useful a man the nation was in danger of losing; the King inquired of the physicians every day how he did, who, not able to conquer the malignancy of the distemper, at last told the King the heavy news, that there was no hope of his life, and that they had given him over as a man for another world. But the pious King had not only recommended his schoolmaster to the care of his physicians, but also to the heavenly Physician, whom in his devotions he earnestly implored to spare his life; and upon his prayers such a strange assurance was impressed in his mind that Cheke would recover, that when the doctors (as was said) despaired of him, the King made this surprising reply to them; "No," said he, " Cheke will not die this time; for "this morning I begged his life in my prayer, and ob"tained it." And so it came to pass; for towards the latter end of the month of May he recovered. This was attested (saith Fuller) by the old Earl of Huntingdon, bred up with the King in his young years; who told it to Cheke's grandchild, Sir Thomas Cheke of Pyrgo, aged near eighty years, anno 1654, who then, it seems, made a relation of it to the said Fuller. His recovery was looked upon as a public blessing, and all good men rejoiced at it. Bishop Rid- Bishop Ridley, in a letter to the Secretary, speaking of Lever, their him, added, “in whose recovery God be blessed." Mr. joy at it. Lever, a very learned and pious preacher, wrote to Ascham,

Recovers.

ley and

IV.

(of whom we have spoke before,) now at Villacho in Carin- SECT. thia, and in his letter prayed to God, that England might, be thankful for restoring such a man again to the King. Anno 1552. “And I am firmly persuaded," said he, "that God wist "and would we should be thankful, and therefore be

66

66

"stowed this gift upon us. He trusted," as he went on, "that God's wrath was satisfied in punishing divers or"ders of the realm for their misorder, having taken away many singular ornaments from them, as learning by the "death of Bucer, counsel by Denny, nobility by the two 66 young Dukes [of Suffolk, who died very shortly after one another of the sweating sickness,] courtship by gen"tle Blage, St. John's college by good Eland; but if "learning, counsel, nobility, Court, and Cambridge, should "have been all punished at once by taking away Mr. "Cheke, then I should have thought our wickedness had "been so great, as cried to God for a general plague, in depriving us of such a general and only man as he."

66

SECT. V.

Cheke at Cambridge. Departs thence to the King. Places conferred on him.

Commence

Athen.

I FIND him this year at Cambridge, gone thither, I suppose, to enjoy his native and beloved air after his sickness; and taking perhaps the opportunity of the King's progress this summer, to go to his residence upon his Provostship in King's college. Now at a Commencement, (as we are Cheke distold,) Sir John Cheke did the University the honour to putes at a make himself a part in the learned exercises then per-ment, formed; for when one Christopher Carlile, whose office it was to keep a divinity act, maintained the tenet of Christ's 111. local descent into hell, our learned man in disputation opposed him. This seems to have been done by consultation, and the argument resolved on, on purpose to meet with the Popish doctrine of the limbus patrum; that is, an apartment of hell, where, they say, the ancient patriarchs and good men before Christ were detained, and

Oxon. p.

CHAP. whither Christ descended to deliver them thence. For IV. Carlile's question was, that our Saviour went into no Anno 1551. Other hell but the very lowest, that is, that of the damned. The ques- This disputation making some noise, Dr. Richard Smith, sometime Professor of Divinity at Oxford, wrote a pretended confutation of it; which was after printed, anno 1562, at Louvain, as it seems, where he now resided.

tion dis

puted.

Places and

favours granted

King.

Soon after the Commencement, Cheke seems to have departed from Cambridge, and to have gone after the him by the King, then in progress in the south-west parts. And as the King, his gracious master, had the last year honoured him with knighthood; so he thought it fit now to add some farther royal testimonies of his favour to him, and to qualify him the better to bear that post: therefore this summer he granted him certain places of honour, and some of benefit too. First, he granted him a patent, bearing date July 23, that one of his household servants, at all times, might shoot in the crossbow, hand-gun, hack-butt, or demy-hack, at certain fowl and deer expressed in the patent, notwithstanding the statute made to the contrary in 33 Henry VIII. This was dated at the honour of Petworth in Sussex, the seat of Sir Anthony Brown, late Master of the Horse, where the King now was in the way of his progress. Again, August the 25th following, a paChamber- tent was granted him to be one of the Chamberlains of Exchequer. the Exchequer, or of the Receipt of the King's Exchequer,

Made

lain of the

which was once Sir Anthony Wyngfield's office, now dead; and also to appoint the keeper of the door of the said Receipt, when his room should fall, and the appointing of all other officers belonging to the same, pro termino vitæ. This was dated at Sarum, where the King was now gotten. Also, as a further token of his interest and favour with the King, he obtained the wardship and marriage of Thomas Barnardiston, son and heir of Sir Thomas Barnardiston, Knight, in the counties of Bedford and Suffolk, and the annuity of 301. per ann. But his last and highest steps were to be a Privy Counsellor, and Secretary of State. Of which we shall hear more in the ensuing chapter.

CHAP. V.

From Sir John Cheke's highest advancements to his exile; and from thence to his surprise, imprisonment, recantation, repentance, and death.

SECT. I.

Cheke's highest advancements. A Privy Counsellor. Secretary of State. Stands for the Lady Jane.

WE come now to the thirty-ninth year, or thereabouts, Anno 1553. of Sir John Cheke's age, a year that saw him advanced very high, and soon after pulled down as low, stripped of all his honour and wealth, and first made a prisoner, and then an exile; for as this year concluded the life of that dear person his royal scholar, so with him of all his temporal felicity.

of the

State.

He was now Clerk of the Council, and so he is entitled He is Clerk in one of the books of the Office of Heralds, under the Council, Chekes of Hampshire. And in May anno 1553, the King bestowed on him and his heirs male, Clare in Suffolk, with divers other lands, (as he had given him the manor of Stoke juxta Clare a year or two ago,) to the yearly value of 100%. But this clerkship was but in order to an higher advancement, namely, to that of one of the principal Se- and Secrecretaries of State, which he was called to in June, and try of made a Privy Counsellor. For to me it seems that in this juncture one of the Secretaries was intended to be laid aside, and he perhaps was Cecil, who cared not to go along with the purposes of the ambitious Duke of Northumberland, to advance his daughter-in-law, married to Guilford Dudley his son, to the crown, and so to bring the kingly dignity into his blood; though the attempt proved to his own and his children's ruin. Cecil was now absent from Court, sick in mind as well as in body. But Cheke's zeal for religion made him willing to side with Northum

CHAP. berland and his party, who put the sick King upon setIV. tling the kingdom upon the Lady Jane, eldest daughter of Anno 1553. Grey Duke of Suffolk, excluding the next legal heirs, his two sisters. And it must be placed among the slips of the loose pen of the author of the State Worthies, when he writes that Cheke was against this will of King Edward, and puts this sentence in his mouth thereupon, "That he "would never distrust God so far in the preservation of "true religion, as to disinherit the orphans to keep up "Protestantism."

His inclination to Jane

Grey.

It swayed him, while he foresaw what a persecution was like to ensue, and what an overthrow of that reformed religion, that had been so carefully planted by good King Edward. For though some secular and ambitious ends drove on the Duke in these lofty and dangerous projects, yet the fears of the return of Popery, and miserable times. consequent thereupon, both to the nation and to the state of true religion, were the arguments that prevailed with Cheke to countenance that interest; and his inclination perhaps to this party made the way for him to be Secretary. To which office he was sworn and admitted June the 2d, and the two other Secretaries were yet continued, and all three Secretaries appeared in Council together. And this appears from the Council Book. So that a cerState Wor- tain observator, that tells the world that Cheke enjoyed this place three years, imposes upon his readers, since in truth he enjoyed it little above four weeks: to which we may add the nine days of the Lady Jane Grey's reign.

thies.

Ascham

congratu

lates his

high place

he was advanced to.

Now we may look upon him employed in the public affairs of state, and advanced into a high and honourable station. On occasion of which, Ascham, being now at Brussels a with Morison the King's Ambassador, begged Ep. III. 9. his pardon for detaining him with his letters, forgetting the authority he had, and the momentous businesses with Ep. III. 11. which he was now taken up. And in another letter congratulated the high place he was advanced to; adding, "that this was an honour long before due to his learning,