To August 16, 1553, from whence he was not delivered till March 22 following. During which time, as he complained himself, he underwent a miserable imprisonment. conceal himself in those dangerous times, he went by the name of Theodore Basil, and was one of those authors, whose names were specified in a severe proclamation put forth by King Philip and Queen Mary, 1555, as being writers of books, which, as contrary to the Pope and Roman Catholic religion, were forbidden to be brought into England, or used, and commanded diligently to be searched for, and brought to the ordinary, upon penalty of the statute of Henry IV. against heresy.2 After his delivery from prison, skulking about for some time, at length he saved himself by exile. He was a man mightily tossed about. For to look upon him, before this, in King Henry's reign; then, for his security, he was forced to leave his friends and country, wandering as far as Derbyshire, and the Peak, where he privately taught school for a subsistence. And, coming a mere stranger into Alsop, in the Dale, one Mr. Alsop, a pious man in that barbarous country, shewed him great civility. Afterwards he travelled into Staffordshire, where he also educated children in good literature, and instilled into their minds the principles of Christian doctrine. After a year's tarrying there, and in Leicestershire, he flitted into Warwickshire, where he taught also divers gentlemen's sons, and where he met with old Father Latimer, to his great joy, who had first made him acquainted with the Gospel, when he was a scholar in Cambridge, twenty years before. He wrote a great many books, forty in number, suited to the various occasions of Christians, both in the persecutions under Queen Mary, and the free profession and restoration of the Gospel under King Edward and Queen Elizabeth, and many more against the religion of the Roman Church. All these did this learned and painful author compose for the benefit of the professors of religion; whereby he did such service to the enlightening of men's minds in the knowledge of the truth, and for the exposing the corruptions of Popery, that it was thought convenient that some of that communion should be employed to 1 [See Fox's Acts and Monuments, vol. vi. pp. 393, 538.] 2 [Id. vol. vii. p. 127.] write against him. And so Richard Smith, sometime reader of divinity in Oxon, and one that had subscribed to the Reformed religion, and after fled into Brabant, and became a zealous assertor of Popery, writ in a bitter style against some of Becon's books, as he had done against the archbishop himself before. I find this Becon put up to preach one of the Lent sermons at St. Paul's Cross, in the year 1566. And such then was his fame for a preacher, and such his favour with the greatest prelates, that the lord mayor for that year sent a message to Archbishop Parker, that his grace would prevail with him to preach one of the sermons at the Spittle that Easter. In the year 1564, he revised and reprinted all his former books in three volumes, dedicating the whole to all the archbishops and bishops of the realm. And in commendation thereof, Parkhurst, bishop of Norwich, wrote these verses to him :— "Vidi et perlegi doctos, Bæcone, libellos, Quos tua non pridem Sancta Minerva dedit. Besides these, there was his Postil, being godly and learned sermons on all the Sunday-gospels in the year, printed in quarto in the year 1567. I shall say no more of his chaplains, after I shall have mentioned Richard Harman, who seems to have been one of his first chaplains; being once of Queen's College, but went away scholar, probably for religion; afterwards lived in Jesus College, and commenced master of arts with Cranmer; whom he also preferred to his domestic afterwards. This man was one of those Cambridge men that were elected into St. Frideswide's College in Oxon; and suffered much there for religion. He was afterwards a canon of Windsor, but fell back to Popery. 181 CHAPTER XXIX. Archbishop Cranmer's Officers. I SHALL now add a few words of two of his civil officers, his steward and his secretary. One [Richard] Nevil was his steward in King Henry's reign, who conducted Sir Thomas Seymour, coming with a message from the king, through the hall, when the tables were sumptuously set, unto the archbishop at dinner;1 him I have nothing to say of. But he had another afterwards, named Robert Watson, born in Norwich, of whom I have a word or two to say. He was a great civilian, and an exile for religion in Queen Mary's reign. But, before his escape beyond sea, he lay in prison in Norwich a year and four months, saith Bale; almost two years, saith Fox; and then was most fortunately delivered, without doing any violence to his conscience, by the subscription which he made. Being abroad, he wrote a piece intituled, "Etiologia, to all that sincerely professed Christ, wheresoever dispersed, especially his countrymen, the English, banished with him." In this tract he gave a relation of himself, and his imprisonment, and escape; and of the disputes that happened between him and his adversaries concerning transubstantiation, and the real presence of Christ in the sacrament; and by what means he escaped safe in body and conscience, which was a rare matter to do from such inquisitors. It was propounded to him to set his hand to these words, viz. :— "That he believed and confessed that the bread and wine in the Eucharist, through the Omnipotency of God's Word, pronounced by the priest, were turned into the body and blood of Christ; and after consecration, under the forms of bread and wine, remained the true body and blood of Christ, and no other substance." To which he made this subscription:-"His omnibus eatenus assentior et subscribo, quatenus Verbo Dei nituntur, eoque sensu, quo sunt ab ecclesia Catholica et a sanctis patribus intellecta." By the means of one Dr. Barret, a learned friar of Norwich, he 1 [See Fox's Acts and Monuments, vol. viii. p. 21.] But was upon this favourable subscription dismissed. Christopherson, dean of Norwich, when he understood it, was much incensed, and laid out to take him again. But he, by the help of friends, escaped over the seas. Now, lastly, of Ralph Morice, his secretary, so much employed, and so greatly intrusted by our archbishop, it may not be amiss to set down a few memorials. He was his secretary, not so much for ordinary matters incident to his archiepiscopal office, as his amanuensis for learned treatises and discourses which he composed. In this place he remained for twenty years; that is, from the archbishop's first entrance upon his see, to the death of King Edward VI., his good master. He was a very considerable person, and of good birth, being the son of James Morice of Roydon, in the county of Essex, Esq. Which James was sometime servant unto the Lady Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby, and clerk of her kitchen, and master of her works; and particularly of Christ's College and St. John's in Cambridge, both which she founded. He also, and his son William, were joint receivers of the lands, called Richmond Lands, and other lands, called the Recovered Lands. Our Ralph, by reason of his service about the archbishop, was well known to Bishop Heath, Bishop Thirlby, Bishop Cox, Bishop Barlow, and Bishop Scory; men that were much about the archbishop, and his friends, and who were privy to those volumes that the secretary writ out for his master. He dwelt sometime in Chartham, not far from Canterbury, and had the farm of that parsonage, and the nomination of the curate. And, being a man of conscience and integrity, endeavoured to procure here an honest and able preacher; and so presented to the church one Richard Turner, a man of an irreprehensible life, and well learned in the Holy Scriptures, who for his doctrine against the Popish superstition, and the Pope's supremacy, met with great troubles. But his patron very stiffly stood by him, and procured the archbishop to favour him; and having an interest with Sir Anthony Denny and Sir William Butts, courtiers, he wrote Mr. Turner's case at large to them, and got them to read his letter before the king; who, though before he had been by sinister reports so incensed against him, as to command him to be whipped out of the country, now by this means he conceived better thoughts of him, and commanded him to be cherished as a good subject; as I have before more at large related.1 Another passage I meet with of this man, relates to the kindness of the archbishop, his master, to him, who, in token of his good will he bore him, and of his readiness to reward his diligence and faithfulness in his service, did procure him a lease of the parsonage of Ospringe, in Kent, being an impropriation belonging unto St. John's College in Cambridge, worth better than forty marks by the year de claro, when wheat was but a noble the quarter. This the archbishop got a grant of from the said college for him. But when the lease was prepared and ready to be sealed, one Hawkins of the guard, by his importunate suit, got King Henry VIII. to obtain it of the college to be sealed for the use of him, the said Hawkins. The archbishop then solicited the king in his servant's behalf, and the king promised him, and also Dr. Day, the master of the college, that he would otherwise recompense Morice for the same, with like value or better, which was never done, the king dying before he did anything for him. This caused Morice to prefer a supplication unto Queen Elizabeth, setting forth his sad case, and desiring therefore her liberality, aid, and succour: especially considering, that her royal father had in his will provided, that all such who had sustained any manner of damage or hinderance by him should be satisfied for the same; suing, therefore, to her majesty for a pension, that had been allowed unto one Wildbore, late prior of the monastery of St. Augustine's, lately deceased, that it might be conferred upon him during his life. And indeed he seemed now, in his old age, to have need of some such favour, his condition being but mean according to worldly things, and having four daughters all marriageable, and not wherewithal to bestow them according to their quality. This his poverty he urged to the queen, and that the granting him this pension would be a good furtherance of his said daughters' marriage. had some The same person 1 [See vol. i. p. 397, of this edition; and Fox's Acts and Monuments, vol. viii. pp. 31-34.] lands descended to him from |