Upon the decease of Archbishop Grindal, (the state desirous to have a learned and discreet person, in so eminent a place, and the Queen resolved to admit none but a single man;) choice was made of Doctor Whitegift,<226> then Bishop of Worcester, a man in many respects very happy, and in the best judgements very worthy. He was noted for a man of great learning in Cambridge, and he was grown to his full ripeness of reading and judgement, even then, when those that they called Puritans (and some merely define to be Protestants scared out of their wits) did begin, not by the plot of some great ones, but by the pen of Mr. Cartwright,<227> to defend their new discipline: their endeavour (as was pretended) was to reduce all, in show at least, to the purity, but indeed to the poverty, of the primitive church.

            These books of Mr. Cartwright, not unlearnedly written, were more learnedly answered by Doctor Whitegift. Both had their reward: for Mr. Cartwright, was by private favour placed about Coventry, where he grew rich, and had great maintenance to live on, and honoured as a patriarch, by many of that profession. Doctor Whitegift was made Bishop of Worcester, and there having a great good report of houskeeping, and governing the marches of Wales, he was (as my author<218> hath told,) called unto Canterbury.

            While he was Bishop of Worcester, though the revenue of it be not very great, yet his custom was to come to the Parliament very well attended, which was a fashion the Queen liked exceeding well. It happened one day, Bishop Elmer, of London, meeting this Bishop with such an orderly troop of Tawny Coats,<28> demanded of him, "How he could keep so many men?" he answered, "It was by reason, he kept so few women."

            Being made Archbishop of Canterbury, and of the Privy Council, he carried himself in that mild and charitable course, that he was not only greatly approved by all the clergy of England, but even by some of those, whom with his pen he might seem to have wounded; I mean the Puritans, of whom he won divers, by sweet persuasions to conformity.

            In the Star Chamber, he used to deliver his sentence in a good fashion, ever leaning to the milder censure as best became his calling.

            He was a great stay in court and council, to all oppressions of the church, though that current was sometime so violent, as one man's force could not stop it.

            He founded an hospital in or nigh Croydon, and placed poor men therein, in his own lifetime, and being grown to a full age, that he might say with St. Paul, bonum certamen certavi, cursum confeci, &c.<229> he was so happy, as to give to his sovereign and preferrer, the last spiritual comfort she took in this world, (I hope to her eternal comfort.) And after that, he not only joined with the other lords, for the proclaiming of King James, but on Saint James' day following, did set the crown on his head, and anointed him with the holy oil. And so having first seen the church setled under a religious king, and the crown established in a hopeful succession, he fell into a palsy, (to which he had been formerly subject,) and with no long or painful sickness, he yieldeth to nature, deserving well this epitaph, written by a young scholar of Oxford that was with me at the writing thereof.

Candida dona tibi Whitegift, sunt nomen et omen,
Candidiora tuis munera nemo dedit:
Nomen habes niveo inscriptum nuncs ergo lapillo,
Aut stola, pro meritis redditur alba tuis.<230>

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