after having been duly matured in the detestable school of Geneva, contributed, under the manage

What was meant by the liberty of godly preachers, &c, may be collected from the fourth, sixth, and eighth articles of these petitions :

"4. Further, that forasmuch as it is prescribed in the form of ordering ministers, that the bishops with the priests present shall lay their hands severally upon the heads of every one that receiveth order, without any mention of any certain number of priests that shall be present; and that in a statute made 21 of King H, the eighth, is affirmed that a bishop must occupy six chaplains at giving of orders; it may be considered whether it may be meet to provide that no bishop shall ordain any minister of the word and sacraments but with the assistance of six other ministers at the least, and thereto such only be chosen as be of good report for their life, learned, continually resiant upon their benefices with cure, and which do give testimony of their cure for the church of God, by their diligence in teaching and preaching in their charge: and that the said ministers do testify their presence at the admission of such ministers by subscription of their hands to some act, importing the same: and further that this admission be had and done publickly, and not in any private house or chapel.

"6. That it be likewise considered whether for the better assurance that none creep into the charge and cures, being men of corrupt life, or not known diligent, it might be provided that none be instituted or by collation preferred to any benefice with cure of souls, or received to be curate in any charge, without some competent notice before given to the parishes where they take charge, and some reasonable time allowed, wherein it may be lawful to such as can discover any defect in conversation of life in the person who, is to be so placed as is aforesaid, to come and object the same.

"8. Whereas sundry ministers of this realm diligent in their calling, and of godly conversation and life, have of late years been grieved with indictments in temporal courts, and molested by some exercising ecclesiastical jurisdictions, for omitting small portions or some ceremony prescribed in the book of Common Prayer, to the great disgrace of their ministry, and imboldening of men either hardly affected in religion, or void of all zeal to the VOL. II.

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ment of a band of wicked and artful hypocrites, to destroy, at once, the church, the nobility, and even the monarchy itself. He was, however, sturdily attached to his sovereign. From a circumstance, re

same, which also hath ministered no small occasion of discouragement to the forwardness of such as would otherwise enter into the ministry; some good and charitable means may be by their honourable discretions devised, that such ministers as in the publick service of the church, and in the administration of the sacraments, do use the book of common prayer allowed by the statutes of this realm and none other, be not from henceforth called to question for omission or change of some portion or rite as is aforesaid, so their doings therein be void of contempt."

6 On Tuesday, Feb. 23, 1584-5, "upon a motion began by Sir Thomas Lucy, and continued [i. e. seconded] by Sir Thomas Moore, that those of this house which are of her Majesties Privy Council, may in the name of this whole house be humble suitors unto her Majesty, that, forasmuch as that villainous traitor, Parry, was a member of this house in the time of some of his most horrible and traiterous conspiracies and attempts against her Majesties most royal person (whom Almighty God long preserve) her Majesty would vouchsafe to give licence to this house, for that many are of the fellowship of the Association, to proceed to the devising and making of some law for his execution after his conviction, as may be thought fittest for his so extraordinary and horrible treason: It was resolved that those of this house being of her Majesties most honourable Privy Council, and now present at this motion, to wit, Mr. Treasurer and M'. Vice Chamberlain, shall exhibit the same humble suit of the House unto her Majesty accordingly at their convenient opportunity." D'Ewes's Journ. 355.

Sir Thomas Lucy was, without doubt, one of the Associators above-mentioned. Of the origin of this association, which in our own time was so happily imitated at a moment when the whole nation was almost benumbed with the well-founded apprehension of the horrors of French anarchy, bloodshed, and impiety, being introduced into this country by domestick traitors acting in con

corded by Sir Simonds D'Ewes, he appears not to have confined his cares solely to the promotion of a godly ministry, but to have extended them to matters of comparatively slight importance, and to have been very active in the preservation of the game 7; an activity that gives some colour to the story already mentioned, and which we shall presently have occasion to review. He had twice served the office of

cert with the vilest of the human race in France, Camden gives us the following account:

"Hinc et ingruentibus undique periculorum rumoribus, ut pravis seditiorum consiliis insidiisque occurreretur, et reginæ saluti, a quo et regnum et religio dependit, consuleretur; plurimi, Leicestrio auctore, ex omni hominum ordine per Angliam ex communi charitate, dum non illam sed de illa timuerunt, se associatione quadam mutuis votis, subscriptionibus, et sigillis obstrinxerunt, ad eos omnibus viribus ad mortem usque persequendos qui in reginam aliquid attentaverint." Annal. ii. 418.

On the next day (February 24, 1584-5), I find Sir Thomas Lucy, Sir Philip Sydney, the Lord Russel, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Cecil, &c. composing a committee to consider "in what measure and manner they should supply her majesty by subsidy."

7 "The bill for the preservation of grain and game, was, upon the second reading, committed to Sir Edward Hobby, Sir John Tracy, Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Henry Nevill, Sir Thomas Lucy, and others; and the bill was delivered to the said Sir Thomas Lucy, who, with the rest, was appointed to meet this afternoon [March 4, 1584-5], in the parliament house or parlour of the Middle Temple." D'Ewes's Journ. 363.

No act, on this subject, being found among the statutes enacted this year, it appears that this bill, in some subsequent stage, was rejected. The purport of it was probably the same as that of an act passed in the seventh year of King James, c. 11, entitled "An Act to prevent the Spoil of Corn and Grain, by untimely Hawking, and for the better Preservation of Pheasants and Partridges."

sheriff; in 1569, for the counties of Warwick and Leicester (the shrievalty of those two counties being then united), and in 1578, for his own county. He was also very particularly connected with the town of Stratford, which he visited frequently, either as an arbitrator, to decide controversies between the inha bitants, as a commissioner for assessing subsidies, as a justice of peace at the quarter sessions, or to review, the trained soldiers which the borough was obliged to furnish for carrying on the Irish war, or for other purposes. If, therefore, our author was so unfortu nate as to offend him, he certainly could afterwards find no safe or comfortable abiding in his native town, where he could not escape the constant notice of his prosecutor.

To form a right judgment on this, as on many other subjects, it is necessary to take into our consideration the prevalent opinions and practices of the time. If these be attended to, in the present case, the act which has been imputed to our poet (with what propriety we shall presently see), however unjustifiable, will rather appear in the light of a youthful indiscretion, in which light it is frequently represented, than as a very criminal offence. That it was a common practice among the young men of those days, and, being wholly unmixed with any sordid or lucrative motive (for the venison thus obtained was not sold, but freely participated at a convivial board), was considered merely a juvenile frolick, may be inferred from a passage in a tract of that age, where it is classed with the other ordinary levities and amusements of youth. "Time of recreation," (says a

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writer against stage-plays, in 1599), " is necessarie, I graunt, and thinke as necessarie for scholars, that are scholars in deede, as it is for any.

Yet in my opinion it were not fit for them to play at stoole-ball among wenches, nor at chance or maw with idle loose companions, nor at trunkes in guile-hals, nor to danse about May-poles, nor to rifle [ruffle] in alehouses, nor to carouse in tavernes, nor to steale deere, nor to rob orchards 8." In like manner, Antony Wood, speaking of Dr. John Thornborough, who was admitted a member of Magdalen College in Oxford, in 1570, at the age of eighteen, and was successively bishop of Limerick in Ireland, and bishop of Bristol and Worcester in England, informs us, that he and his kinsman, Robert Pinkney, "seldom studied or gave themselves to their books; but," (as is related by Simon Forman, then a poor scholar of the same college, who was chiefly maintained by their bounty, and with whom they frequently associated), "spent their time in the fencingschools and dancing-schools, in stealing deer and conies, in hunting the hare, and wooing girls': At the time here referred to, Thornborough was a bachelor of arts, and twenty-two years old.

The following quibbling verses also, written by a contemporary of our poet, afford another testimony to the same point:

8 The Overthrow of Stage Plaies, 4to. 1599, p. 23.

9 Afterwards the celebrated astrologer, who died in 1613. Probably, the passage quoted by Wood is found in one of For-man's MSS. in the Ashmole Museum, in Oxford.

1 Athen. Oxon. i. 371.