Nugae Antiquae
<200>About the month of August last past, [A. D. 1606] his Majesty then being at Windsor, a Londoner of honest credit told me how a preacher in the city had, with more zeal than discretion, (reprehending the spoilers of the Church, and such as gape for such spoils) told withal how some lewd<201> person had scattered in divers places this rhyme:
Henry the 8. pulled down abbeys and cells,
But Henry the 9. shall pull down Bishops and bells.
This most reasonless rhyme, borne away by the vulgar auditors better perhaps than any part of the text or sermon, hath bred since amongst divers men divers cogitations. The worst sort of papists, that have not yet disgested the dissolution of abbeys, (and may perhaps in a factious policy broach such a bruit<202>) fill men with fear that all tends to impiety and atheism, as though no man can serve God that is not a Roman. The giddy puritan, that is most suspected of the making and meaning of it, is well pleased when he hears it, hoping their presbytery would rise by the fall of Bishops; their charity being to quench the fire raised by this schism, non aqua, sed ruina, "not with water but with ruin," as Tully saith in his oration pro Murena. The malcontent rejoices to hear of spoil, that he whom no chance can lightly<203> make worse, some change may possibly make the better.— But the true Christian, that fears God and honours the King, doth neither despise such lewd practises and preparatives to mischief, nor any whit deject his heart and his hope, either to believe them or give way to them; but rather bestirs himself the more courageously, to discover the fraud and resist the malice of the enemy. For this is no new practice of Satan, nor the first of this kind in these latter times in which he showeth this cunning; that mixing falsehood with probabillities, and forespeaking some mischiefs he would effect, as well as foretelling some blessings he could not hinder; he getteth his disciples such credit as Agrippa attributes to astrologers, who roving<204> sometimes at some truth, win fools to give faith to much falsehood.
But to show how stale this goodly prediction is of the ruin of bishops, though some ill poet hath given it a new coat, the old vestment made by Piers Plowman<205> being belike worn out of fashion, it is well known to many yet living how Sir Roger Manhood,<206> a man nothing superstitious, and concerning all soothsayers and witches almost incredulous, yet out of some strange speculation seemed to prognosticate two great matters, the one of which being allready falsified, makes me no less confident that the other shall prove as untrue.
His first prognostication (as I call it) was of the great civil wars that would rise by the uncertainty of succession immediately after Q. Elizabeth's death, for which cause I have heard he conveyed his land so as no state of inheritance should remain in any of his heirs till 5 years after the Queen's death, which was his time limited for ending this great war, which war lasted not five minutes, for neither man nor mouse once peeped against her indubitable heir, and therefore, now his heir may possess his more doubtful inheritance.
His second speculation asketh a more longer time to disprove; but thus it was. In his lifetime he made a tomb of good value, for matter as well as workmanship, and showing the same, among others, to a knight of his country, (Sir Ed. Hobby;<207>) both for wit, learning, and alliance, of great reputation; he was asked by the said knight, where it should stand, whether in Paul's, or Westminster, or Canterbury; he told him, very seriously, he had given order to set it in a mean parish church: and being asked the reason, he answered—"because, forsooth, he would be glad to have his bones lie quiet, as long as he might, but (saith he) you see the abbey churches are already pulled down, and our wizards tell that cathedral churches shall be next; the poor parish churches will stand longest, and therefore there would I lie."—And there you may lie, and be found a liar in this point even at the day of judgement, and God deal then as mercifully with you and your man Luker, as our late Sovereign did, when she told you the story of Cambyses,<208> and threatened to make you such an example, for some peccadillos of yours; and your peremptory writing to the Lords of the Council.
Omnes qui sunt male agentes,
Semper currunt ad potentes,
Vivat Rex, currat Lex.<209>
Adieu my Lords.
After all which, she forgave all this; and sent you down your circuit, not only with safety but with solace.
But now I return to our new prophecies, one of which I have here expressed, (being afore so famous) the others I will not recite, lest I may seem to commit the fault I reprove; but the prophets themselves have ill success, to hazard both their liberties and lives with their lies. This traitorous and malicious prediction of Henry the 9th (whom I wish no longer to hold the crown than he can be content to expect it) comes out of the same forge with the former, and is now newly furbished by some malcontent (as Sir Thomas Chaloner,<210> when I first told him of it, did as probably as prudently conjecture) that wishing evil to the present goverment, in his false heart, would also, as far as in him lieth, poison the hope of our children and posterity; a treason so much more odious to all good minds, by how much the future time is ever more carefully respected than the present; every good spirit being ready to undergo hazard, travail, and cost, to leave his posterity in good estate when he dies, and to die himself in peace, as Horace doth very well express,
Senes ut in otia tuta recedant.<211>
But when I consider with myself that no less pious than wise and princely maxim of his Majesty, our Solomon; No bishops, no king: to I dare be bold to ad, this; No king, no nobility or gentry:—I conceive, with extreme detestation, what a horrible confusion they intend to bring upon us, that now breathe out to us their prophecies of pulling down bishops.
This made me bold first to recommend to the noble Prince, (with the privity of his discreet and virtuous tutor, Mr. Newton, Dean of Durham,<212>) this well approved work<213> of Dr. Francis Godwin, now Bishop of Llandaff; a work so well esteemed by our late Sovereign, as in reward thereof she made himself a bishop. Then, with small entreaty, I undertook to add this SUPPLEMENT unto it of the late times, with as much fidelity and perspicuity, and as little partiality, as possibly I could; which though I think fit to be seen of few, yet I wish it may be perused by his Highness; and hope, in some respects, it will be thought not unworthy of his reading. For, in reading of both, he shall plainly see, that Christian religion was first planted by bishops, that it hath been preserved and continued with bishops, and that it will fall and decay without bishops; as in some other treatise I will, God willing, more prove.
But now if any one should ask, why such a man as I should busy myself so earnestly in a cause that concerns so many and so learned men; all much better able to defend themselves, and all more properly or at least more deeply interested in the same?—I answer, that the less I am interested in it, the better I may be credited. As I have observed sometime how in a camp, when for lack of pay, or some other distress, the soldiers are ready to mutiny against their captains, or the general himself; a corporal, or a gentleman of a band, doth prevail more many times to pacify their minds, than the captains themselves, against whom they be chiefly exasperate: so in this spiritual mutiny against bishops, by many inferior soldiers of the militant church, that having glutted themselves with manna, murmur against Moses and Aron; it may be my persuasion (though neither so eloquent nor vehement as some of them could use in their own cause) may prevail more with those of my sort, and be less suspected of passion or partiality, esteeming myself for this purpose, as Tully said of himself, non electus ex multis qui maximo judicio, sed relictus ex omnibus qui minimo periculo possim dicere: "not as a choice man among the best, that can speak with most judgment, but as one left among the meanest, which may discourse with least danger." In which kind, if I use more freedom of speech than ordinary, either of the dead or of the living, let me not be deemed either malicious or audacious; having learned of the same author, Qui vere et libere loquitur, hunc male non loqui: "a true and free speaker is no evil speaker." And if any find fault that my relations fall short in many places of their merits of whom I speak, and in some points may seem but uncertain; I must be borne with therein, as they that report battles fought, at which themselves were present: who though they could not from any one place see all the feats of arms, and defeats, that they write of; yet telling part of that he saw and felt, as Æneas doth, quorum pars una fui;<214> and gathering part by the sequel, and some by other men's report, or the enemies' confession, is supposed to write a true history.
Lastly, for all such as seem daunted and dismayed with these fond<215> predictions, I wish them to be of good comfort, and to assure themselves that it is impossible a Prince descended of such ancestors, so virtuously brought up, so devoutly and sweetly inclined, by nature and nurture; whose father with incomparable wisdom and piety hath new erected 14 bishoprics decayed, and (which is an augurium<216> against this wicked prediction) turned a broken cannon in Scotland to a bell, should so strangely degenerate in England, to pull down 24 bishoprics so long since and so firmly established; and to profane bells, ordained for the sound of joy, and honour of Christian peace, to make of them cannons, the thunderers of ruins and horror of Turkish wars.
