Nugae Antiquae
As those that sail from Flanders or Ireland to London or Bristol, being past the tempestuous and broken seas, and now in sight of the harbor, yet even there fear to miscarry, sometime by mistaking the channel, and are oft so perplexed, as one bids to set sail again; another advises to cast anchor; so is it now with me, drawing toward the end of this my short and voluntary voyage: I remember a ship of London once, that having passed the Godwin Sands very safe, and sailing on this side Blackwall to come up to Ratcliff, struck on the black rock at the point below Greenwich, and was almost cast away. I have (as your Highness sees) past already the Godwins, if I can as well pass over this Edwin Sands,<493> I will go roomer<494> of Greenwich rock, not forgetting to vail,<495> as becomes me, in passing by; and if the spring tide serve, come to anchor about Richmond. For I am entring now to write of an archbishop, who, though he died 20 years since, in that anno mirabili of 88, yet he lives still in his offspring, having a son<496> of his name, that both speaks and writes admirably, whose profession, though it be not of religion, as his father's was, yet never did his father's preaching show better what to follow, than his writings show what to shun. If my pen therefore should wrong his father, his pen no less might wring me. I must appeal, therefore, for my justification in this point, to the most indifferent censures,<497> and to yours especially, sweet Prince, for whose sake I write; for if I should let pass a matter so notorious as that of this archbishop of York and Sir Ro. Stapleton, it were so wilful an omission as every one might accuse me of; and if I should speak of either, partially and against my own conscience and knowledge, I should much more accuse myself. Here then is the Scylla and Charybdis that I sail between, and if I fail of my right course, I shall be driven to say, as a silly preacher did upon an unlike occasion, and much less to his purpose, when he happened unwares to have a more learned auditory than he expected,
Incidi in ancillam cupiens vitare Caribdin.<498>
But the story that I make this long introduction unto, is shortly this. About 25 years since, there was great kindness, and had long continued, between Archb. Sands and Sir Robert Stapleton, a knight of Yorkshire,<499> whom your Highness hath often seen, who in those days, for a man well spoken, properly seen in languages, a comely and goodly personage, had scant an equal, and (except Sir Phillip Sidney) no superior in England: for which reasons, the archbishop, of all his neighbours and countrymen, did make especial account of him. About the year 83 also, he was high-sheriff of Yorkshire, and met the judges with seven score men in sutable liveries, and being at this time likewise a widower, he wooed and won, and wedded soon after, one of the best reputed widows in the West of England. In this felicity he sailed with full sails, but somewhat too high, and no less the archbishop, in like prosperity of wealth, and friends, and children, yet seeming above all to joy in the friendship of this knight, who answered in all good correspondence, not only of outward compliment, but inward comfort; but well said the Spanish poet,
Nulli te facias nimis sodalem,
Gaudebis minus, et minus dolebis.
Too much companion make yourself to none,
Your joy will be the less, and less your moan.<500>
These two, so friendly neighbors and consorts, swimming in this calm of content, at last happened to fall foul one of another by this occasion. The knight, in his great good fortunes, having as great designs, among other things had laid the foundation of a fair house, or rather palace, the model whereof he had brought out of Italy, which house he intended to name Stapleton's Stay; and for that cause invited the archbishop in good kindness to see it, and requested him, for the more credit, and, as it were, blessing to the house, that his Grace would give it the foresaid name. But when the archbishop had fully beheld it, and in his judgement found it fitter for a Lord Treasurer of England than for a knight of Yorkshire, he said to him;—"Would you have me call this intended house Stapleton's Stay? Nay, rather let me say to you stay Stapleton; for if you go forward to set up this house, it will pull you down." How often a man loses a friend with a jest, and how grievous it is for a man's vanity to be crossed in the humour! This speech of my Lord's, that I should think intended friendly, uttered faithfully, and applied even fatherly unto him, he took in so deep disdain and despite, that howsoever he smothered it for the present, from that time forward he sought a mean to revenge it. And wanting neither wit to devise, nor courage to execute his design, he found out, or at least he supposed he had found, a stratagem not only to wreak this scorn on the good bishop, that mistrusted nothing, but also to make the old man's purse pay for the finishing of the new house. He acquaints him with an officer in my Lord's house, some malcontent that had been denied a lease. These two devise, that when my lord should lie next at Doncaster, where the hostess of the house having been (formerly I suppose) Mrs. Sands her maid, was bold sometimes to bring his lordship a caudle to his bedside, (for in charity I may surmise no worse,) Sir Robert should also by chance come and host at the same house. This bad wife and her good man, are made partakers and parties of this stratagem; her part was but a naked part, via to slip into my lord's bed in her smock; mine host must suddenly be jealous, and swear that he holds his reputation, though he be but a poor man, more dear than that he can endure such an indignity; and thereupon calls Sir Robert Stapleton, brings him to the bishop's chamber in his night-gown, takes them in bed together, with no small exclamation. The knight, that acted his part with most art and least suspicion, takes great pains to pacify the host, conjures all that were admitted to secrecy and silence, and sending all to their lodgings without tumult, asketh of my lord how this came to pass. The bishop tells him with great protestation, that he was betrayed by his man and his host, little suspecting the knight to be of the quorum. The knight soothes him in all he said, condoles the great mischance, is sorrowful for the danger, and careful for the honour of the bishop, and specially the church.
Pro superi, quantum mortalia pectora cæcæ
Noctis habent? ipso sceleris molimine (miles)
Creditur esse pius.<501>
The distressed archbishop, distrusting no fraud in him, asketh his advice in this disaster, and following his counsel from time to time; gives the host a piece of money, the false officer a farm, and the knight, for his travail, many friendly recompences. But when he found, after all this smoothing and soothing, that he grew so bold at last to press him beyond all good manner, for the good mannor of Southwell, then he found that in sooth all was not well, and was even compelled too late to do that he might much better have done much sooner, viz, to complain to the Lords of the Council, and to his ancient and dear friend the Earl of Leicester, (for whose father he had almost lost his life,) by whose help he got them called to the Star-chamber, ore tenus;<502> where they were, for this conspiracy, convicted, fined, and imprisoned. The fame, or rather infamy, of this matter, specially before their conviction, was far and diversly spread, according as the reporters favored or disfavored either: and the friends of each side had learned their tale so perfect, that many long time after held the first impression they had received, notwithstanding the censure and sentence in the star-chamber; part whereof being, that the knight should publicly acknowledge how he had slandered the archbishop, which he did in words conceived to that purpose accordingly: yet his friends gave out, that all the while he carried a long whetstone<503> hanging out of the pocket of his sleeve, so conspicuous, as men understood his meaning was to give himself the lie, which he would not in another matter have taken of any man. But thus the bishop had a conquest which he had no great comfort of, and lived but few years after it, and the knight had a foil<504> that he would not seem much daunted with, and lived to have part of his fine released by his Majesty's clemency; but yet he tossed up and down all his life without any great contentment, from Wiltshire into Wales, and thence to the Isle of Man, a while to Chelsea but little to Yorkshire, where his chiefest stay should have been; so that of this story I could collect many documents, both for bishops and knights; but that I shun prolixity in a matter no way pleasing.
Howbeit, because one P. R. or R. P.<505> (for he can turn his name as a mountebank turns his cap,) in his epistle before the Resolution, a book much praised by Sir Edwin Sands, hath a scoff, after his manner, at this hostess of Doncaster; I would pray him but to peruse the life of St. Bernard, not that of their lying legend, but that which unworthily perhaps goeth among his most worthy works, written by William Abbot in five books. There he shall find, in the third chapter of his first book, how that same maidenly saint was subject to a like manner of scandal; first of a young woman lying by him naked in bed half a night, when himself was not 30 year old, and yet we must believe he touched her not; and next of his hostess also offering three times in one night to come to his bed, and he crying out each time, Latrones, Latrones! "Thieves, Thieves!" which our bishop had much more cause to have cried, and had he but remembred it, as I doubt not but he had read it, he might peradventure have dissolved the pack with it. To utter mine own conceit frankly, if Parson's conjecture were true, that by human frailty this prelate had in his younger days been too familiar with this woman, which is said to pass but as a venial sin among those of his profession; yet was the knight's practice very foul, and the lords' censure very just that condemned him: for I heard Judge Anderson, a learned and stout judge, condemn one for a rape, upon the oath of a married woman, (notwithstanding the man affirmed, and the woman denied not but she had often in former times yielded herself to his lust,) because it seemed she had repented that course of life, in betaking her to a husband. So my lord, if he had once such a fault, (yet now that the fault had left him, as well as he the fault,) had just cause to complain, and the knight's practise was blameworthy, to seek to entrap him thereby, to the spoil of the church and disgrace of his calling. And the archbishop did much nobler to hazard this obloquy of some idle tongues, than to have incurred the greater scandal of betraying his church. To conclude therefore; I wish all squires and knights to be fuller of reverence toward bishops and archbishops, and not to oppose or contest with them. The play of chess (a game not devised for or by fools) may teach, that the bishops due place is nearest the King, and though some knight can leap better over the pawn's heads, yet oft-times he leaps short, where the bishop's power, if you cross it, reacheth the length of the whole province.
