commodious than those of Cambridge; and thereunto the streets of the towne for the most part more large and comelie. But for uniformitie of building, orderlie compaction, and politike requirent, the towne of Cambridge [as the newer workmanship] exceedeth that of Oxford (which otherwise is, and hath beene, the greater of the two").

"The professors," he says, "have all the rule of disputations and other schoole exercises, ... and such of their hearers, as by their skill in the same disputations, are thought to have atteined to anie convenient ripenesse of knowleledge, are permitted solemnlie to take their deserved degrees of schoole in the same science and facultie wherein they have spent their travell."

...

"From that time forward, also," he adds, "they use such difference in apparell as becommeth their callings, tendeth unto gravitie, and maketh them knowne to be called to some countenance."

And with the donning of the apparel that tendeth unto gravity, i.e. the graduate's gown, and with the University degree-or frequently at that time without it the scholar passed from the arena of academical life in quiet Hall and cloister, into the great world of activity and enterprise which composed the England of Shakspere's day.

CHAPTER V

ARCHBISHOP PARKER: THE JESUITS AND

INDEPENDENTS

HAD Elizabeth succeeded to the crown of England immediately after the death of her father, her position with regard to the Church would have been far less difficult than it actually was.

She desired to continue the Reformation of the English Church on the lines on which he had begun it, but there stretched between his work and hers the reigns of her brother and sister during which religion, on either side, had been fanned into fanaticism. But Elizabeth was the true daughter of Henry VIII., no difficulties daunted her, no foes intimidated her; she was far more of a politician than a religious enthusiast, and as a politician she set to work upon the religious problems of her reign, just as she worked at all other political problems.

With her usual discernment in choosing suitable men for her advisers-if this most dictatorial

monarch can be described as possessing advisers

at all she selected as Archbishop of Canterbury, in succession to Cardinal Pole, Matthew Parker, a celebrated Cambridge scholar.

Parker was the son of a "calenderer" of Norwich, and had been born in that town on August 6th, 1504, and sent as a youth to Cambridge, first to St. Mary's Hostel, and then to Corpus Christi College.

He was a man of moderate views, sensible, unemotional, slow to anger, and industrious, and he proved a wise and sound councillor and an active helper to the Queen in the long hard years that lay before the Church of England.

Parker was endeared to Elizabeth by early association, for he had been chaplain to her unfortunate mother, and later on had lived a studious and peaceful life as Dean of St. John-at-Stoke, in Suffolk.

In 1544 he had returned to Cambridge as Master of Corpus, recommended to the Fellows of the college in the royal order "as well for his approved learning, wisdom, and honesty, as for his singular grace and industry in bringing up youth in virtue and learning, so apt for the exercise of the said roome, as it is thought very hard to find the like for all respects and purposes." To Cambridge, and more particularly to Corpus,

Parker was devotedly attached throughout his life, and he made an energetic and conscientious Master, revising the accounts of the college, which he found in a state of confusion, and making inventories of the goods and estates belonging to it.

Then came the violent ecclesiastical changes of Edward's and Mary's reigns, during the first of which Parker was in high favour, and was made Dean of Lincoln, while during the gloomy years of Mary he lived in constant fear of his life. It was in flying from his pursuers on one occasion then that he had a severe fall from his horse, which left injuries from which he never entirely recovered.

But with the accession of Elizabeth he had no longer any need to fear: she seemed to recognise in him the man she required to help her in restoring to the country a national

Church; one that would be a via media between Roman Catholicism and the severe doctrines of Luther and Calvin.

There was a difficulty about Parker's consecration three bishops refused to have any part in it, but others were found to take their place, and the ceremony was performed with the Litany, the laying on of hands, and other ritual, on

December 17th, 1559, in the Archbishop's Chapel

at Lambeth.

Parker had not been eager for the appointment, and had written at length to Lord Burghley, then William Cecil, urging how few qualifications he possessed for the post; poor, and in bad health owing to his late accident. "Flying in a night," he writes, "from such as sought for me to my peril, I fell off my horse so dangerously, that I shall never recover it; and by my late journey up, and my being there at London not well settled, it is increased to my greater pain. I am fain sometime to be idle, when I would be occupied, and also to keep my bed, when my heart is not sick."

He also felt himself far fitter for a life of quiet study at his beloved University than for such a prominent position as that of Archbishop; he evidently feared what, in a later letter to Cecil, he calls his "overmuch shamefastness," which prevented him from "raising up his heart to utter in talk with others," and which he again attributed to "passing those hard years of Mary's reign in obscurity." But Elizabeth's will was not to be gainsaid, and he was consecrated to the vacant see of Canterbury.

In one particular he had not the approval of