whose memory should be embalmed in language of no common eloquence !

The cares too, of Archiepiscopal command, cannot, even in these days, be light. What were they in the days of PARKER, when the vengeance of the Papist on the one hand, (lately dislodged from his power,) and the encouraged zeal of the Puritan on the other, involved every step in danger, and every expression in distrust or misrepresentation?

John Strype has collected with admirable industry, the memorials of this great man, as well as of the other protestant Archbishops who immediately succeeded him. The massive volumes of this industrious biographer are again rising into their just estimation. We cannot peruse the thick-printed pages of this author, without deriving multitudinous information of a period fertile in events, and beset with the most intricate difficulties. The stakes of Smithfield had scarcely ceased to blaze, and the blood of martyrs had but recently flowed from the scaffold!

Pure Spirit of him, who, amid these times of turbulence and danger, could leave the pomp of office, and protection of power, to cultivate the Holy Muses, I bow to thy name with awe and reverence, and record thy written labours with fond admiration! Often as I view the dilapidated abode of thy rural retirement, I imagine the walls to be sanctified by thy former presence, and often as I cross the deserted fields of its domain, now harassed by the plough, and trod only by the uneducated husbandman, I behold again the forms

The ancient palace of Beakesbourne, to which the grounds of the Editor's residence in the country adjoin. It has long been let to farm on beneficial leases.

of the associates of learning, whom thou once cherishedst there, and people again the surrounding woods and mansions with more cultivated and refined inhabitants!

The Archbishop in a letter to the Lord Treasurer accompanying a MS. of Gervasius Tilburiensis, a copy of Lambard's Perambulation of Kent, and his own Antiquitates Britannica, apologizes, that "he had bound his book costly, and laid in colours the arms of the church of Canterbury, impaled with his own paternal coat," saying

"His Lordship might indeed note many vanities in his doings, but he thought it not against his profession to express his own times, and give some testimony of his fellow-brothers, of such of his coat, as were in place of her Majesty's reign, and when himself was thus placed. And though his Lordship might rightly blame an ambitious fancy in him, for setting out their church's arms in colours, yet he told him he might, if he pleased, relinquish the leaf, and cast it into the fire. And he had joined it but loose in the leaf for that purpose, if he so thought it meet. And as he might, if it so liked him (without great grief to him the Archbishop) cast the whole book the same way. This book he said he had not given to four men in the whole realm: and peradventure, added he, it shall never come to sight abroad, though some men smelling of the printing of it, were very desirous cravers of the same. He was content to refer it wholly to his judgment to stand or fall. For the present he purposed to keep it by him, while he lived, to add or mend, as occasion should serve him, or utterly to suppress it, and bren it. And thus, as he told his Lordship, he made him privy to his follies.

And for that he had within his house, in wages, DRAWERS OF PICTURES, and CUTTERS, (that is Engravers,) PAINTERS, LIMNERS, WRITERS, and BOOKBINDERS, he was bolder to take his occasion thus Equitare in arundine longa, so spending his wasteful time within his own walls, till Almighty God should call him out of this tabernacle.".

"Of these rare Books," says Strype," the Right Reverend Father in God, the Bishop of Ely, in his exquisite Library, has one, which in his great humanity, and readiness to forward all good learning, he hath lent to me. There is another in the public Library of the University of Cambridge. A third is in the Library of St. John's College there. And a fourth in the possession of the Reverend and learned Mr. Thomas Baker, B.D. Fellow of the said College. But the choicest of all, was lately possessed by the late most Reverend Archbishop Sancroft, which was Joselyn's (his Chaplain's) own Book, (as I have been told) and corrected and enlarged in many places by his own pen. Which after came into the hands of Mr. Wharton, his Chaplain; and had he lived, would have been published with his additions, together with the British Antiquities.” *

Strype gives at p. 417, a minute account of the contents, ornaments, and other particulars of one of these copies, which exactly answers to the very curious copy now in the British Museum. It is sufficient to refer to this account; for though Strype's work is gradually rising into the demand which its merits deserve, it is yet too easy of access to justify so long a transcript, in addition to those which I have already given.

"But notwithstanding all the Archbishop's good deeds, and good deserts, he must go through evil report as well as good report, the lot of the servants of Christ. There was a little

Strype's Life of Parker, 1711. fol.
C

Latin Book belonging to the College aforesaid (Corpus Christi) and compiled for their use, called Historiola, being a M S. declaring briefly the History of the Foundation, and successive Masters of that College. This book was writ by the Archbishop's own direction about the year 1569, and still is preserved with great esteem in the College. The original by the favour of Dr. Spenser, some time Master, was shewn, and lent to me to peruse. It had here and there the Archbishop's own corrections. And when in the course of the History, the writer came to speak of Dr. Parker, in his turn Master, he treated more at large of him, both of the preferments that happened to him, and of the good works he did. But some of the Archbishop's enemies, that is certain of the Puritan Faction (and tis probable Aldrich the Master was privy to it) getting the copy of the Book, procured the translation of it into English, and this year (1574) printed it beyond seas (as it seems by the Letter) with foolish, scurrilous, and malicious notes in the margin; and entituled it with equal spite, The Life of the LXXb Arcshbishop of Canterbury presently sittinge, Englished: And to be added to the sixty-nine lately set forth in Latin. And then adding this rude jest, (shewing his good will to the Archbishop and all that high and venerable order in the See of Canterbury) viz. This Numbre of Seventy is so compleat a Number, as it is great pity there should be one more, but that as St. Augustin was the first, so Matthew should be the last."

Strype then goes on to give instances of the Writer's contumelious and uncharitable marginal annotations, and reflections. The Writer, as Strype observes, gives the account of himself, "that his lot was low, and that the Archbishop knew him not."

"If he were a layman," says Strype, "as he gives himself out to be, I am apt to think it might be John Stubbs of Lincoln's Inn, whose right hand not many years after was chopped

off for bold and seditious writing. Who, as he had a bitter scoffing style, so he was a man of some parts and learning; and being allied to Thomas Cartwright, a man exceedingly disaffected to the Archbishop and the Hierarchy) having married Stubbs's sister, was very probably encouraged and assisted by him. But enough of this book, and the unworthy reflections in it, upon our innocent, but deserving Archbishop."*

The margin of the translated text of the Archbishop's Life is thus loaded with abusive comments; and to the end of it is subjoined An address “to the Christian Reader," containing three sheets of bitter criticism on the Archbishop's History. A specimen of this severe libel may not be unacceptable.

"That he might sig

nifye, that men off his estate seldome founde such counselers, as would boldlye, and freely tell them off there duetye, it happened by wise advise off the herauld, that suche armes were allotted hym (as the use for noble personages) which both might expresse the ancient armes of the stocke from whence he issued, and might admonishe hym also off his honor and office in the church, in that that starres were added to his armes. Whereunto Gualter Haddon Doctor of lawe, a man off singular learninge and authoritye (whom our most noble Queene Elizabeth appointed to be one off the Masters off the requestes, and Mathew hymselfe hadd made hym chiefe Judge off his prerogative court) very finely alluded in these verses.

* Strype's Life of Parker, p. 487. 489.