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upon the bishop out of lands purchased by his majesty himself from the duke of Lenox, who sold it much the cheaper, that it might be consecrated to so pious an end; and placed a very emi

season, than the bishop did, and believed he could better compose and reduce them in a little time, and at a distance, than at the present, and whilst he was amongst them. Besides he was in his nature too much inclined to the Scots nation, hav-nent scholar of a good family in the kingdom, who ing been born amongst them, and as jealous as any one of them could be that their liberties and privileges might not be invaded by the English, who, he knew, had no reverence for them: and therefore the objection, "that it would look like an imposi"tion from England, if a form, settled in parlia"ment at Westminster, should without any altera"tion be tendered (though by himself) to be sub"mitted to, and observed in Scotland," made a deep impression in his majesty.

In a word, he committed the framing and composing such a liturgy as would most probably be acceptable to that people, to a select number of the bishops there, who were very able and willing to undertake it and so his majesty returned into England, at the time proposed to himself, without having ever proposed, or made the least approach in public towards any alteration in the church.

had been educated in the university of Cambridge, to be the first bishop in that his new city; and made another person, of good fame and learning, his first dean of his new cathedral, upon whom likewise he settled a proper maintenance; hoping by this means the better to prepare the people of the place, who were the most numerous and richest of the kingdom, to have a due reverence to order and government, and at least to discountenance, if not suppress, the factious spirit of presbytery, which had so long ruled there. But this application little contributed thereunto: and the people generally thought, that they had too many bishops before, and so the increasing the number was not like to be very grateful to them.

The bishops had indeed very little interest in the affection of that nation, and less authority over it; they had not power to reform or regulate their own cathedrals, and very rarely shewed themselves in the habit and robes of bishops; and durst not contest with the general assembly in matters of

It had been very happy, if there had been then nothing done indeed, that had any reference to that affair, and that, since it was not ready to promote it, nothing had been transacted, which acci-jurisdiction: so that there was little more than the dentally alienated the affections of the people from it; and this was imputed to the bishop of London, who was like enough to be guilty of it, since he did naturally believe, that nothing more contributed to the benefit and advancement of the church, than the promotion of churchmen to places of the greatest honour, and offices of the highest trust: and this opinion and the prosecution of it (though his integrity was unquestionable, and his zeal as great for the good and honour of the state, as for the advancement and security of the church) was the unhappy foundation of his own ruin, and of the prejudice towards, and malice against, and almost destruction of the church.

During the king's stay in Scotland, when he found the conjuncture not yet ripe for perfecting that good order which he intended in the church, he resolved to leave a monument behind him of his own affection and esteem of it. Edinburgh, though the metropolis of the kingdom, and the chief seat of the king's own residence, and the place where the council of state and the courts of justice still remained, was but a borough town within the diocese of the archbishop of saint Andrew's, and governed in all church affairs by the preachers of the town; who, being chosen by the citizens from the time of Mr. Knox, (who had a principal hand in the suppression of popery, with circumstances not very commendable to this day,) had been the most turbulent and seditious ministers of confusion that could be found in the kingdom; of which king James had so sad experience, after he came to age, as well as in his minority, that he would often say, "that his access to the crown of England was the "more valuable to him, as it redeemed him from "the subjection to their ill manners and insolent practices, which he could never shake off before." The king, before his return from thence, with the full consent and approbation of the archbishop of saint Andrew's, erected Edinburgh into a bishoprie, assigned it a good and convenient jurisdiction out of the nearest limits of the diocese of saint Andrew's, appointed the fairest church in the town to be the cathedral, settled a competent revenue

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name of episcopacy preserved in that church. To redeem them from that contempt, and to shew that they should be considerable in the state, how little authority soever they were permitted to have in the church, the king made the archbishop of saint Andrew's, a learned, wise, and pious man, and of long experience, chancellor of the kingdom, (the greatest office, and which had never been in the hands of a churchman since the reformation of religion, and suppressing the pope's authority,) and four or five other bishops of the privy-council, or lords of the session; which his majesty presumed, by their power in the civil government, and in the judicatories of the kingdom, would render them so much the more reverenced, and the better enable them to settle the affairs of the church: which fell out otherwise too; and it had been better that envious promotion had been suspended, till by their grave and pious deportment they had wrought upon their clergy to be better disposed to obey them, and upon the people to like order and discipline; and till by these means the liturgy had been settled, and received amongst them; and then the advancing some of them to greater honour might have done well.

But this unseasonable accumulation of so many honours upon them, to which their functions did not entitle them, (no bishop having been so much as a privy-councillor in very many years,) exposed them to the universal envy of the whole nobility, many whereof wished them well, as to all their ecclesiastical qualifications, but could not endure to see them possessed of those offices and employments, which they looked upon as naturally belonging to them; and then the number of them was thought too great, so that they overbalanced many debates; and some of them, by want of temper, or want of breeding, did not behave themselves with that decency in their debates, towards the greatest men of the kingdom, as in discretion they ought to have done, and as the others reasonably expected from them: so that, instead of bringing any advantage to the church, or facilitating the good intentions of the king in settling order and government, it produced a more general

prejudice to it; though for the present there appeared no sign of discontent, or ill-will to them; and the king left Scotland, as he believed, full of affection and duty to him, and well inclined to receive a liturgy, when he should think it seasonable to commend it to them.

remissness, and prevented it in their own dioceses as much as they could, and gave all their countenance to men of other parts and other principles; and though the bishop of London, Dr. Laud, from the time of his authority and credit with the king, had applied all the remedies he could to those defections, and, from the time of his being chancellor of Oxford, had much discountenanced and almost suppressed that spirit, by encouraging another kind of learning and practice in that uni

trine of the church of England; yet that temper in the archbishop, whose house was a sanctuary to the most eminent of that factious party, and who licensed their most pernicious writings, left his successor a very difficult work to do, to reform and reduce a church into order, that had been so long neglected, and that was so ill inhabited by many weak, and more wilful churchmen.

It was about the end of August in the year 1633, when the king returned from Scotland to Greenwich, where the queen kept her court; and the first accident of moment, that happened after his coming thither, was the death of Abbot, arch-versity, which was indeed according to the docbishop of Canterbury; who had sat too many years in that see, and had too great a jurisdiction over the church, though he was without any credit in the court from the death of king James, and had not much in many years before. He had been head or master of one of the poorest colleges in Oxford, and had learning sufficient for that province. He was a man of very morose manners, and a very sour aspect, which, in that time, was called gravity; and under the opinion of that virtue, and by the recommendation of the earl of Dunbar, the king's first Scotch favourite, he was preferred by king James to the bishopric of Coventry and Litchfield, and presently after to London, before he had been parson, vicar, or curate of any parish-church in England, or dean or prebend of any cathedral church; and was in truth totally ignorant of the true constitution of the church of England, and the state and interest of the clergy; as sufficiently appeared throughout the whole course of his life afterward.

He had scarce performed any part of the office of a bishop in the diocese of London, when he was snatched from thence, and promoted to Canterbury, upon the never enough lamented death of Dr. Bancroft, that metropolitan, who understood the church excellently, and had almost rescued it out of the hands of the Calvinian party, and very much subdued the unruly spirit of the nonconformists, by and after the conference at Hamptoncourt; countenanced men of the greatest parts in learning, and disposed the clergy to a more solid course of study, than they had been accustomed to; and, if he had lived, would quickly have extinguished all that fire in England, which had been kindled at Geneva; or if he had been succeeded by bishop Andrews, bishop Overal, or any man who understood and loved the church, that infection would easily have been kept out, which could not afterwards be so easily expelled.

It was within one week after the king's return from Scotland, that Abbot died at his house at Lambeth. And the king took very little time to consider who should be his successor, but the very next time the bishop of London (who was longer upon his way home than the king had been) came to him, his majesty entertained him very cheerfully with this compellation, My lord's grace of Canterbury, you are very welcome; and gave order the same day for the dispatch of all the necessary forms for the translation: so that within a month or thereabouts after the death of the other archbishop, he was completely invested in that high dignity, and settled in his palace at Lambeth. This great prelate had been before in great favour with the duke of Buckingham, whose great confidant he was, and by him recommended to the king, as fittest to be trusted in the conferring all ecclesiastical preferments, when he was but bishop of St. David's, or newly preferred to Bath and Wells; and from that time he entirely governed that province without a rival: so that his promotion to Canterbury was long foreseen and expected; nor was it attended with any increase of envy or dislike.

He was a man of great parts, and very exemplary virtues, allayed and discredited by some unpopular natural infirmities; the greatest of which was, (besides a hasty, sharp way of expressing himself,) that he believed innocence of heart, and integrity of manners, was a guard strong enough to secure any man in his voyage through this world, in what company soever he travelled, and through But Abbot brought none of this antidote with what ways soever he was to pass and sure never him, and considered Christian religion no other- any man was better supplied with that provision. wise, than as it abhorred and reviled popery, and He was born of honest parents, who were well valued those men most, who did that most furi- able to provide for his education in the schools of ously. For the strict observation of the discipline learning, from whence they sent him to St. John's of the church or the conformity to the articles or college in Oxford, the worst endowed at that time canons established, he made little inquiry, and took of any in that famous university. From a scholar less care; and having himself made a very little he became a fellow, and then the president of that progress in the ancient and solid study of divinity, college, after he had received all the graces and he adhered wholly to the doctrine of Calvin, and, degrees (the proctorship and the doctorship) for his sake, did not think so ill of the discipline could be obtained there. He was always maligned as he ought to have done. But if men prudently and persecuted by those who were of the Calvinian forbore a public reviling and railing at the hier-faction, which was then very powerful, and who, archy and ecclesiastical government, let their opinions and private practice be what it would, they were not only secure from any inquisition of his, but acceptable to him, and at least equally preferred by him. And though many other bishops plainly discerned the mischiefs, which daily broke in to the prejudice of religion, by his defects and

according to their useful maxim and practice, call every man they do not love, papist; and under this senseless appellation they created him many troubles and vexations; and so far suppressed him, that though he was the king's chaplain, and taken notice of for an excellent preacher, and a scholar of the most sublime parts, he had not any

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preferment to invite him to leave his poor college, which only gave him bread, till the vigour of his age was past and when he was promoted by king James, it was but to a poor bishopric in Wales, which was not so good a support for a bishop, as his college was for a private scholar, though a doctor.

Parliaments in that time were frequent, and grew very busy; and the party under which he had suffered a continual persecution, appeared very powerful, and full of design, and they who had the courage to oppose them, began to be taken notice of with approbation and countenance: and under this style he came to be first cherished by the duke of Buckingham, after he had made some experiments of the temper and spirit of the other people, nothing to his satisfaction. From this time he prospered at the rate of his own wishes, and being transplanted out of his cold barren diocese of St. David's, into a warmer climate, he was left, as was said before, by that omnipotent favourite in that great trust with the king, who was sufficiently indisposed towards the persons or the principles of Mr. Calvin's disciples.

as he could. They had been fellows together in
one college in Oxford, and, when he was first
made bishop of saint David's, he made him pre-
sident of that college: when he could no longer
keep the deanery of the chapel royal, he made him
his successor in that near attendance upon the
king and now he was raised to be archbishop,
he easily prevailed with the king to make the
other, bishop of London, before, or very soon
after, he had been consecrated bishop of Here-
ford, if he were more than elect of that church.
It was now a time of great ease and tranquillity;
the king (as hath been said before) had made him-
self superior to all those difficulties and straits he
had to contend with the four first years he came
to the crown at home; and was now reverenced
by all his neighbours, who all needed his friend-
ship, and desired to have it; the wealth of the
kingdom notorious to all the world, and the general
temper and humour of it little inclined to the pa-
pists, and less to the puritan. There were some
late taxes and impositions introduced, which rather
angered than grieved the people, who were more
than repaired by the quiet, peace, and prosperity
they enjoyed; and the murmur and discontent that
was, appeared to be against the excess of power
exercised by the crown, and supported by the
judges in Westminster-hall. The church was not
repined at, nor the least inclination to alter the
government and discipline thereof, or to change
the doctrine. Nor was there at that time any con-
siderable number of persons of any valuable con-
dition throughout the kingdom, who did wish
either; and the cause of so prodigious a change in
so few years after was too visible from the effects.
The archbishop's heart was set upon the advance-
ment of the church, in which he well knew he had
the king's full concurrence, which he thought would
be too powerful for any opposition; and that he
should need no other assistance.

When he came into great authority, it may be, he retained too keen a memory of those who had so unjustly and uncharitably persecuted him before; and, I doubt, was so far transported with the same passions he had reason to complain of in his adversaries, that, as they accused him of popery, because he had some doctrinal opinions which they liked not, though they were nothing allied to popery; so he entertained too much prejudice to some persons, as if they were enemies to the discipline of the church, because they concurred with Calvin in some doctrinal points; when they abhorred his discipline, and reverenced the government of the church, and prayed for the peace of it with as much zeal and fervency as any in the kingdom; as they made manifest in their lives, and in their sufferings with it, and for it. He had, from his first Though the nation generally, as was said before, entrance into the world, without any disguise or dis- was without any ill talent to the church, either in simulation, declared his own opinion of that classis the point of the doctrine, or the discipline, yet they of men; and, as soon as it was in his power, he were not without a jealousy that popery was not did all he could to hinder the growth and increase enough discountenanced, and were very averse of that faction, and to restrain those who were in- from admitting any thing they had not been used clined to it, from doing the mischief they desired to, which they called innovation, and were easily to do. But his power at court could not enough persuaded, that any thing of that kind was but to qualify him to go through with that difficult re- please the papists. Some doctrinal points in conformation, whilst he had a superior in the church, troversy had been, in the late years, agitated in the who, having the reins in his hand, could slacken pulpits with more warmth and reflections, than had them according to his own humour and indiscre-used to be; and thence the heat and animosity intion; and was thought to be the more remiss, to irritate his choleric disposition. But when he had now the primacy in his own hand, the king being inspired with the same zeal, he thought he should be to blame, and have much to answer, if he did not make haste to apply remedies to those diseases, which he saw would grow apace.

In the end of September of the year 1633, he was invested in the title, power, and jurisdiction of archbishop of Canterbury, and entirely in possession of the revenue thereof, without a rival in church or state; that is, no man professed to oppose his greatness; and he had never interposed or appeared in matter of state to this time. His first care was, that the place he was removed from might be supplied with a man who would be vigilant to pull up those weeds, which the London soil was too apt to nourish, and so drew his old friend and companion Dr. Juxon as near to him

creased in books pro and con upon the same arguments: most of the popular preachers, who had not looked into the ancient learning, took Calvin's word for it, and did all they could to propagate his opinions in those points: they who had studied more, and were better versed in the antiquities of the church, the fathers, the councils, and the ecclesiastical histories, with the same heat and passion in preaching and writing defended the contrary.

But because, in the late dispute in the Dutch churches, those opinions were supported by Jacobus Arminius, the divinity professor in the university of Leyden in Holland, the latter men, we mentioned, were called Arminians; though many of them had never read a word written by Arminius. Either side defended and maintained their different opinions as the doctrine of the church of England, as the two great orders in the church of Rome, the Do

minicans and Franciscans, did at the same time, | for revenge; so the fines imposed there were the and had many hundred years before, with more more questioned, and repined against, because vehemence and uncharitableness, maintained the they were assigned to the rebuilding and repairing same opinions one against the other; either party St. Paul's church; and thought therefore to be professing to adhere to the doctrine of the catholic the more severely imposed, and the less compaschurch, which had been ever wiser than to deter- sionately reduced and excused; which likewise mine the controversy. And yet that party here, made the jurisdiction and rigour of the starwhich could least support themselves with reason, chamber more felt, and murmured against, which were very solicitous, according to the ingenuity sharpened many men's humours against the bithey always practise to advance any of their pre- shops, before they had any ill intention towards tences, to have the people believe, that they who the church. held with Arminius did intend to introduce popery; and truly the other side was no less willing to have it thought, that all, who adhered to Calvin in those controversies, did in their hearts likewise adhere to him with reference to the discipline, and desired to change the government of the church, destroy the bishops, and so set up the discipline that he had established at Geneva; and so both sides found such reception generally with the people, as they were inclined to the persons; whereas, in truth, none of the one side were at all inclined to popery, and very many of the other were most affectionate to the peace and prosperity of the church, and very pious and learned men.

The archbishop had, all his life, eminently opposed Calvin's doctrine in those controversies, before the name of Arminius was taken notice of, or his opinions heard of; and thereupon, for want of another name, they had called him a papist, which nobody believed him to be, and he had more manifested the contrary in his disputations and writings, than most men had done; and it may be the other found the more severe and rigorous usage from him, for their propagating that calumny against him. He was a man of great courage and resolution, and being most assured within himself, that he proposed no end in all his actions or designs, than what was pious and just, (as sure no man had ever a heart more entire to the king, the church, or his country,) he never studied the best ways to those ends; he thought, it may be, that any art or industry that way would discredit, at least make the integrity of the end suspected, let the cause be what it will. He did court persons too little; nor cared to make his designs and purposes appear as candid as they were, by shewing them in any other dress than their own natural beauty and roughness; and did not consider enough what men said, or were like to say of him. If the faults and vices were fit to be looked into, and discovered, let the persons be who they would that were guilty of them, they were sure to find no connivance or favour from him. He in tended the discipline of the church should be felt, as well as spoken of, and that it should be applied to the greatest and most splendid transgressors, as well as to the punishment of smaller offences, and meaner offenders; and thereupon called for or cherished the discovery of those who were not careful to cover their own iniquities, thinking they were above the reach of other men's, or their power or will to chastise. Persons of honour and great quality, of the court, and of the country, were every day cited into the high-commission court, upon the fame of their incontinence, or other scandal in their lives, and were there prosecuted to their shame and punishment: and as the shame (which they called an insolent triumph upon their degree and quality, and levelling them with the common people) was never forgotten, but watched

There were three persons most notorious for their declared malice against the government of the church by bishops, in their several books and writings, which they had published to corrupt the people, with circumstances very scandalous, and in language very scurrilous, and impudent; which all men thought deserved very exemplary punishment: they were of three several professions which had the most influence upon the people, a divine, a common lawyer, and a doctor of physic; none of them of interest, or any esteem with the worthy part of their several professions, having been formerly all looked upon under characters of reproach yet when they were all sentenced, and for the execution of that sentence brought out to be punished as common and signal rogues, exposed upon scaffolds to have their ears cut off, and their faces and foreheads branded with hot irons, (as the poorest and most mechanic malefactors used to be, when they were not able to redeem themselves by any fine for their trespasses, or to satisfy any damages for the scandals they had raised against the good name and reputation of others,) men began no more to consider their manners, but the men; and every profession, with anger and indignation enough, thought their education, and degrees, and quality, would have secured them from such infamous judgments, and treasured up wrath for the time to come.

The remissness of Abbot, and of other bishops by his example, had introduced, or at least connived at, a negligence, that gave great scandal to the church, and no doubt offended very many pious men. The people took so little care of the churches, and the parsons as little of the chancels, that, instead of beautifying or adorning them in any degree, they rarely provided for their stability and against the very falling of very many of their churches; and suffered them at least to be kept so indecently and slovenly, that they would not have endured it in the ordinary offices of their own houses; the rain and the wind to infest them, and the sacraments themselves to be administered where the people had most mind to receive them. This profane liberty and uncleanliness the archbishop resolved to reform with all expedition, requiring the other bishops to concur with him in so pious a work; and the work sure was very grateful to all men of devotion: yet, I know not how, the prosecution of it with too much affectation of expense, it may be, or with too much passion between the ministers and the parishioners, raised an evil spirit towards the church, which the enemies of it took much advantage of, as soon as they had opportunity to make the worst use of it.

The removing the communion table out of the body of the church, where it had used to stand, and used to be applied to all uses, and fixing it to one place in the upper end of the chancel, which frequently made the buying a new table to be ne

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cessary; the inclosing it with a rail of joiner's work, and thereby fencing it from the approach of dogs, and all servile uses; the obliging all persons to come up to those rails to receive the sacrament, how acceptable soever to grave and intelligent persons, who loved order and decency, (for acceptable it was to such,) yet introduced first murmurings amongst the people, upon the very charge and expense of it; and if the minister were not a man of discretion and reputation to compose and reconcile those indispositions, (as too frequently he was not, and rather inflamed and increased the distemper,) it begat suits and appeals at law. The opinion that there was no necessity of doing any thing, and the complaint that there was too much done, brought the power and jurisdiction to impose the doing of it, to be called in question, contradicted, and opposed. Then the manner, and gesture, and posture, in the celebration of it, brought in new disputes, and administered new subjects of offence, according to the custom of the place, and humour of the people; and those disputes brought in new words and terms (altar, and adoration, and genuflexion, and other expressions) for the more perspicuous carrying on those disputations. New books were written for and against this new practice, with the same earnestness and contention for victory, as if the life of Christianity had been at stake. There was not an equal concurrence, in the prosecution of this matter, amongst the bishops themselves; some of them proceeding more remissly in it, and some not only neglecting to direct any thing to be done towards it, but restraining those who had a mind to it, from meddling in it. And this again produced as inconvenient disputes, when the subordinate clergy would take upon them, not only without the direction of, but expressly against the diocesan's injunctions, to make those alterations and reformations themselves, and by their own authority.

The archbishop, guided purely by his zeal, and reverence for the place of God's service, and by the canons and injunctions of the church, with the custom observed in the king's chapel, and in most cathedral churches, without considering the long intermission and discontinuance in many other places, prosecuted this affair more passionately than was fit for the season; and had prejudice against those, who, out of fear or foresight, or not understanding the thing, had not the same warmth to promote it. The bishops who had been preferred by his favour, or hoped to be so, were at least as solicitous to bring it to pass in their several dioceses; and some of them with more passion and less circumspection, than they had his example for, or than he approved; prosecuting those who opposed them very fiercely, and sometimes unwarrantably, which was kept in remembrance. Whilst other bishops, not so many in number, or so valuable in weight, who had not been beholding to him, nor had hope of being so, were enough contented to give perfunctory orders for the doing it, and to see the execution of those orders not intended; and not the less pleased to find, that the prejudice of that whole transaction reflected solely upon the archbishop.

having faults enough to be ashamed of, the punishment whereof threatened him every day, he was very willing to change the scene, and to be brought upon the stage for opposing these innovations (as he called them) in religion. It was an unlucky word, and cozened very many honest men into apprehensions very prejudicial to the king and to the church. He published a discourse and treatise against the matter and manner of the prosecution of that matter; a book so full of good learning, and that learning so close and solidly applied, (though it abounded with too many light expressions,) that it gained him reputation enough to be able to do hurt; and shewed that, in his retirement, he had spent his time with his books very profitably. He used all the wit and all the malice he could, to awaken the people to a jealousy of these agitations and innovations in the exercise of religion; not without insinuations that it aimed at greater alterations, for which he knew the people would quickly find a name; and he was ambitious to have it believed that the archbishop was his greatest enemy, for his having constantly opposed his rising to any government in the church, as a man whose hot and hasty spirit he had long known.

Though there were other books written with good learning, and which sufficiently answered the bishop's book, and to men of equal and dispassionate inclinations fully vindicated the proceedings which had been, and were still, very fervently carried on; yet it was done by men whose names were not much reverenced by many men, and who were taken notice of, with great insolence and asperity to undertake the defence of all things which the people generally were displeased with, and who did not affect to be much cared for by those of their own order. So that from this unhappy subject, not in itself of that important value to be either entered upon with that resolution, or to be carried on with that passion, proceeded upon the matter a schism amongst the bishops themselves, and a world of uncharitableness in the learned and moderate clergy, towards one another: which, though it could not increase the malice, added very much to the ability and power of the enemies of the church to do it hurt, and added to the number of them. For without doubt, many who loved the established government of the church, and the exercise of religion as it was used, and desired not a change in either, nor did dislike the order and decency, which they saw mended, yet they liked not any novelties, and so were liable to entertain jealousies that more was intended than was hitherto proposed; especially when those infusions proceeded from men unsuspected to have any inclinations to change, and from known assertors of the government both in church and state. They did observe the inferior clergy took more upon them than they had used to do, and did not live towards their neighbours of quality, or their patrons themselves, with that civility and condescension they had used to do; which disposed them likewise to a withdrawing their good countenance and good neighbourhood from them.

The archbishop had not been long at Canterbury, The bishop of Lincoln (Williams) who had been when there was another great alteration in the heretofore lord keeper of the great seal of Eng-court by the death of the earl of Portland, high land, and the most generally abominated whilst he had been so, was, since his disgrace at court, and prosecution from thence, become very popular; and

treasurer of England; a man so jealous of the archbishop's credit with the king, that he always endeavoured to lessen it by all the arts and ways

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