And knowing how much the doctrine and converse of the master to be placed here would influence the gentlemen, and their influence and authority prevail in all parts of the realm where their habitations and estates were, that careful prelate made it his enOpposed by deavour to stop Travers's coming in; and had a learned man in his the Arch- view, and of principles more conformable and agreeable to the bishop. church, namely, one Dr. Bond, the Queen's chaplain, and well known to her. She well understanding the importance of this place, and knowing by the Archbishop what Travers was, by a letter he timely writ to her Majesty upon the vacancy, gave particular order to the Treasurer to discourse with the Archbishop about it. The Archbi Queen con The Lord Treasurer hereupon, in a letter, consulted with the said Achbishop, and mentioned Travers to him, as one desired by many of the house. But the Archbishop, in his answer, plainly signified to his Lordship, that he judged him altogether unfit, for the reasons mentioned before; and that he had recommended to the Queen Dr. Bond, as a very fit person. But, however, she declined him, fearing his bodily strength to perform the duty of the place, as she did Travers for other causes. And by laying both aside, she avoided giving disgust to either of those great men. This Dr. Bond seems to be that Dr. Nicholas Bond that afterwards was president of Magdalen-college, Oxon, and was much abused by Martin Mar-prelate. These particulars I have collected from a letter of the Archbishopto the Queen, and other letters that passed between the Archbishop and the Lord Treasurer about this affair, while the mastership was vacant. The passages whereof, taken verbatim out of their said letters, may deserve here to be specified for the satisfaction of the readers. And first, in the month of August, upon the death of the former master, the Archbishop wrote this letter unto the Queen: "It may please your Majesty to be advertised, that the mastershop to the ship of the Temple is vacant by the death of Mr. Alvey. The living cerning the is not great, yet doth it require a learned, discreet, and wise man, vacancy of in respect of the company there: who, being well directed and the Temple. taught, may do much good elsewhere in the commonwealth, as otherwise also they may do much harm. And because I hear there is suit made to your Highness for one Mr. Travers, I thought it my duty to signify unto your Majesty, that the said Travers hath been, and is one of the chief and principal authors of dissension in this church, a contemner of the Book of Prayers, and of other orders by authority established; an earnest seeker of innovation; and either in no degree of the ministry at all, or else ordered beyond the seas; not according to the form in this church of England used. Whose placing in that room, especially by your Majesty, would greatly animate the rest of that faction, and do very much harm in sundry respects. "Your Majesty hath a chaplain of your own, Dr. Bond, a man in my opinion very fit for that office, and willing also to take pains therein, if it shall please your Highness to bestow it upon him. Which I refer to your own most gracious disposition: beseeching Almighty God long to bless, prosper, and preserve your Majesty to his glory, and all our comforts, "Your Majesty's most faithful Servant and Chaplain Next, in a letter of the Archbishop to the Lord Treasurer, dated from Lambeth, Sept. 14, 1584, he hath these words: to the Lord "I beseech your Lordship to help such a one to the mastership The Archof the Temple, as is known to be conformable to the laws and orbishop ders established; and a defender, not a depraver, of the present Treasurer. state and government. He that now readeth there is nothing less, as I of mine own knowledge and experience can testify. Dr. Bond is desirous of it, and I know not a fitter man." The Lord Treasurer, in a letter to the Archbishop, dated from Oatlands (where the Queen now was), Sept. 17, 1584, thus wrote: Treasurer "The Queen hath asked me what I thought of Travers to be The Lord master of the Temple. Whereunto I answered, that at the request to the Archof Dr. Alvey in his sickness, and a number of honest gentlemen of bishop. the Temple, I had yielded my allowance of him to the place, so as he would shew himself conformable to the orders of the church. Whereunto I was informed, that he would so be. But her Majesty told me that your Grace did not so allow of him. Which, I said, might be for some things supposed to be written by him (in a book) entituled, De Disciplina Ecclesiastica. Whereupon her Majesty commanded me to write to your Grace, to know your opinion, which I pray your Grace to signify unto her, as God shall move you. Surely it were great pity, that any impediment should be occasion to the contrary; for he is well learned, very honest, and well allowed, and loved of the generality of that house. Mr. Bond told me, that your Grace liked well of him; and so do I also, as of one well learned and honest; but, as I told him, if he came not to the place with some applause of the company, he shall be weary thereof. And yet I commended him unto her Majesty, if Travers should not have it. "But her Majesty thinks him not fit for that place, because of his infirmities. Thus wishing your Grace assistance of God's Spirit to govern your charge unblameable. "Your Grace's to command, "WILL. BURGHLEY," From the Court at Oatlands, the 27th Sept. 1584, The Archbishop in answer to the Lord Treasurer. Part of the Archbishop's letter in answer to this was to this tenor : "Mr. Travers, whom your Lordship names in your letter, is to no man better known, I think, than to myself; I did elect him fellow the letter of of Trinity-college, being before rejected by Dr. Beaumont for his intolerable stomach: whereof I had also afterwards such experience, that I was forced by due punishment so to weary him, till he was fain to travel, and depart from the college to Geneva, otherwise he should have been expelled for want of conformity towards the orders of the house, and for this pertinancy. Neither was there ever any under our government, in whom I found less submission and humility than in him. Nevertheless, if time and years have now altered that disposition (which I cannot believe, seeing yet no token thereof, but rather the contrary), I will be as ready to do him good as any friend he hath. Otherwise I cannot in duty but do my endeavour to keep him from that place, where he may do so much harm, and do little or no good at all. For howsoever some commend him to your Lordship and others, yet I think that the greater and better number of both the Temples have not so good an opinion of him. Sure I am, that divers grave, and of the best affected of them, have shewed their misliking of him to me; not only out of respect of his disorderliness in the manner of the communion, and contempt of the prayers, but also of his negligence in reading. Whose lectures, by their report, are so barren of matter, that his hearers take no commodity thereby. "The book De Disciplina Ecclesiastica, by common opinion, hath been reputed of his penning, since the first publishing of it. And by divers arguments I am moved to make no doubt thereof. The drift of which book is wholly against the state and government. Wherein also, among other things, he condemneth the taking and paying of first-fruits, tenths, &c. And therefore, unless he will testify his conformity by subscription, as all others do which now enter into ecclesiastical livings, and make proof unto me, that he is a minister ordered according to the laws of this church of England, as I verily believe he is not, because he forsook his place in the college upon that account, I can by no means yield my consent to the placing him there or elsewhere, in any function of this church.] And here I shall make a stop; and, that the reader may the better judge of what follows, give him a character of the times, and temper of the people of this nation, when Mr. Hooker had his admission into this place: a place which he accepted, rather than desired; and yet here he promised himself a virtuous quietness: that blessed tranquillity which he always prayed and laboured for; that so he might in peace bring forth the fruits of peace, and glorify God by uninterrupted prayers and praises: for this he always thirsted; and yet this was denied him.. For his admission into this place was the very beginning of those oppositions and anxieties, which till then this good man was a stranger to, and of which the reader may guess by what follows. In this character of the times, I shall, by the reader's favour, and for his information, look so far back as to the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; a time in which the many pretended titles to the crown, the frequent treasons, the doubts of her successor, the late civil war, and the sharp persecution that had raged to the effusion of so much blood in the reign of Queen Mary, were fresh in the memory of all men; and these begat fears in the most pious and wisest of this nation, lest the like days should return again to them or their present posterity. The apprehension of which dangers begat an earnest desire of a settlement in the church and state; believing there was no other way to make them sit quietly under their own vines and fig-trees, and enjoy the desired fruit of their labours. But time, and peace, and plenty, begat self-ends; and those begat animosities, envy, opposition, and unthankfulness, for those blessings for which they lately thirsted, being then the very utmost of their desires, and even beyond their hopes. This was the temper of the times in the beginning and progress of her reign; and thus it continued too long: for those very people that had enjoyed the desires of their hearts in a reformation from the church of Rome, became at last so like the grave, as never to be satisfied; but were still thirsting for more and more: neglecting to pay that obedience to government, and perform those vows to God, which they made in their days of adversities and fears: so that in short time there appeared three several interests, each of them fearless and restless in the prosecution of their designs; they may for distinction be called, the active Romanists, the restless nonconformists (of which there were many sorts), and the passive, peaceable protestant. The counsels of the first considered and resolved on in Rome: the second in Scotland, in Geneva, and in divers selected, secret, dangerous conventicles, both there, and within the bosom of our own nation: the third pleaded and defended their cause by established laws, both ecclesiastical and civil: and if they were active, it was to prevent the other two from destroying what was by those known laws happily established to them and their posterity. I shall forbear to mention the very many and dangerous plots of the Romanists against the church and state; because what is principally intended in this digression, is an account of the opinions and activity of the nonconformists; against whose judgment and practice Mr. Hooker became at last, but most unwillingly, to be engaged, in a book-war; a war which he maintained, not as against an enemy, but with the spirit of meekness and reason. Nonconformists represented. In which number of nonconformists, though some might be sincere and well-meaning men, whose indiscreet zeal might be so like charity, as thereby to cover a multitude of errors, yet of this party there were many that were possessed of a high degree of spiritual wickedness; I mean with an innate, restless, radical pride and malice; I mean not those lesser sins which are more visible and more properly carnal, and sin against a man's self, as gluttony and drunkenness, and the like, (from which good Lord deliver us!) but sins of a higher nature; because more unlike to the nature of God, which is love, and mercy, and peace; and more like the devil (who is not a glutton, nor can be drunk; and yet is a devil): those wickednesses of malice and revenge, and opposition, and a complacence in working and beholding confusion (which are more properly his work, who is the enemy and disturber of mankind; and greater sins, though many will not believe it): men whom a furious zeal and prejudice had blinded and made incapable of hearing reason, or adhering to the ways of peace; men whom pride and self-conceit had made to overvalue their own wisdom, and become pertinacious, and to hold foolish and unmannerly disputes against those men which they ought to reverence, and those laws which they ought to obey; men that laboured and joyed to speak evil of government, and then to be the authors of confusion (of confusion as it is confusion): whom company, and conversation, and custom had blinded, and many insensible that these were errors; and at fast became so restless, and so hardened in their opinions, that like those which " perished in the gainsaying of Core," so these died without repenting these spiritual wickednesses, of which Coppinger and Hacket, and their adherents, are too sad testimonies. And in these times, which tended thus to confusion, there were also many others that pretended to tenderness of conscience, refusing to submit to ceremonies, or to take an oath before a lawful magistrate and yet these very men did, in their secret conventicles, covenant and swear to each other, to be assiduous and faithful in using their best endeavours to set up a church-government that they had not agreed on. To which end there were many select parties that wandered up and down, and were active in sowing discontents and sedition, by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous pamphlets and libels against the church and state; but especially against the bishops; by which means, together with very bold, and as indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatic, as St. Peter observed there were in his time" some that wrested the Scripture to their own destruction;" so by these men, and this means many came to believe the bishops to be antichrist, and the only obstructors of God's discipline; and many of them were at last given over to such desperate delusions, as to find out a text in the Reve |