FURTHER APPENDIX ΤΟ THE LIFE OF MR. RICHARD HOOKER. NUMBER I. The Copy of a Letter writ to Mr. Izaak Walton, by Dr. King, Lord Bishop of Chichester 1. HONEST IZAAK, 2 THOUGH a familiarity of more than forty years' continuance, and the constant experience of your love, even in the worst of the late sad times, be sufficient to endear our friendship; yet I must confess my affection much improved, not only by evidences of private respect to those very many that know and love you, but by your new demonstration of a public spirit, testified in a diligent, true, and useful collection, of so many material passages as you have now afforded me in the Life of venerable Mr. Hooker; of which, since desired by such a friend as yourself, I shall not deny to give the testimony of what I know concerning him and his learned Books; but shall first here take a fair occasion to tell you, that you have been happy in choosing to write the lives of three such persons, as posterity hath just cause to honour; [This letter has hitherto been prefixed to the Life of Hooker. But as it chiefly relates to the fate of the three last Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, it was judged more convenient to transfer it to the Appendix. According to Wood, Ath. Oxon. III. 839, Dr. Henry King was made Bishop of Chichester 1641, and died October 1669.] 2 [On comparing this with note (2) on the Introduction to the Life, it will appear that Walton's intimacy with the writer of this letter began about the time of his (Walton's) first marriage: Bishop King's family being most intimate with that of Mrs. Spencer, whose niece Walton married.] which they will do the more for the true relation of them by your happy pen; of all which I shall give you my unfeigned censure. I shall begin with my most dear and incomparable friend, Dr. Donne, late dean of St. Paul's church, who not only trusted me as his executor, but three days before his death delivered into my hands those excellent sermons of his now made public; professing before Dr. Winniff3, Dr. Monford, and, I think, yourself, then present at his bed-side, that it was by my restless importunity that he had prepared them for the press; together with which (as his best legacy) he gave me all his sermon-notes, and his other papers, containing an extract of near fifteen hundred authors. How these were got out of my hands, you, who were the messenger for them 5, and how lost both to me and yourself, is not now seasonable to complain; but, since they did miscarry, I am glad that the general demonstration of his worth was so fairly preserved, and represented to the world by your pen in the history of his life; indeed so well, that, beside others, the best critic of our later time (Mr. John Hales, of Eton college) affirmed to me, "he had not seen a life written with more "advantage to the subject, or more reputation to the writer, "than that of Dr. Donne's." After the performance of this task for Dr. Donne, you undertook the like office for our friend Sir Henry Wotton, betwixt which two there was a friendship begun in Oxford, continued in their various travels, and more confirmed in the religious friendship of age, and doubtless this excellent person had writ the life of Dr. Donne, if death had not prevented him by which means, his and your precollections for that work fell to the happy menage of your pen: a work, which you would have declined, if imperious persuasions had not been stronger than your modest resolutions against it. And I am thus far glad, that the first life was so imposed upon you, because it gave an unavoidable cause of writing the second: if not, it is too probable we had wanted both, which had been a prejudice to all lovers of honour and ingenious learning. And let me not leave my friend Sir Henry without this testimony added to yours, that he was a man of as florid a wit, and as elegant a pen, as any former (or ours which in that kind is a most excellent) age, hath ever produced. And now having made this voluntary observation of our two deceased friends, I proceed to satisfy your desire concerning what I know and believe of the ever-memorable Mr. Hooker, who was schismaticorum malleus 6, so great a champion for the church of England's rights, against the factious torrent of Separatists that then ran high against Church Discipline, and in his unanswerable Books continues still to be so against the unquiet disciples of their schism, which now under other names still carry on their design; and who (as the proper heirs of their irrational zeal) would again rake into the scarce-closed wounds of a newly bleeding state and church. And first, though I dare not say that I knew Mr. Hooker, yet, as our ecclesiastical history reports to the honour of S. Ignatius, that he lived in the time of St. John, and had seen him in his childhood; so, I also joy that in my minority I have often seen Mr. Hooker, with my father, who was after Lord Bishop of London; from whom, and others, at that time, I have heard most of the material passages which you relate in the history of his life; and from my father received such a character of his learning, humility, and other virtues, that, like jewels of unvaluable price, they still cast such a lustre as envy or the rust of time shall never darken. From my father I have also heard all the circumstances of the plot to defame him; and how Sir Edwin Sandys out 6 ["Petrus de Alliaco, circ. A.D. " 1400, Malleus a veritate aberran"tium indefessus appellari solitus." Wharton, App. ad Hist. Lit. p. 84.] 7 ["our," spoken as by a churchman to a layman.] 8 [Martyr. S. Ignat. in Coteler. Patr. Apost. II. 163, 169.] [Dr. John King was student of Ch. Ch. 1576, had the living of St. Anne and St. Agnes, London, : 1580 of St. Andrew's Holborn, 1597: was Dean of Ch. Ch. 1605 : Bishop of London, 1611: died 1621. Wood's Ath. Oxon. II. 294. He was charged, after his death, with papistry: which charge his son, the writer of this letter, refuted in a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, which was published, and is extant.] witted his accusers, and gained their confession; and I could give an account of each particular of that plot, but that I judge it fitter to be forgotten, and rot in the same grave with the malicious authors. I may not omit to declare, that my father's knowledge of Mr. Hooker was occasioned by the learned Dr. John Spencer, who after the death of Mr. Hooker was so careful to preserve his unvaluable sixth, seventh, and eighth Books of Ecclesiastical Polity, and his other writings, that he procured Henry Jackson 10, then of Corpus Christi college, to transcribe for him all Mr. Hooker's remaining written papers 11; many of which were imperfect; for his study had been rifled, or worse used, by Mr. Chark, and another, of principles too like his but these papers were endeavoured to be completed by his dear friend, Dr. Spencer, who bequeathed them as a precious legacy to my father; after whose death they rested in my hand, till Dr. Abbot, then Archbishop of Canterbury, commanded them out of my custody, by authorizing Dr. John Barkham 12 to require and bring them to him to his palace in A. O. III. 577. He was successively rector of Trent in Somersetshire, and of Meysey Hampton in Gloucestershire, where he died, June 4, and was buried, June 9, 1662. He was much employed in translating the treatises of the English reformers into Latin. Fulm. X. 78. Wood says, "being a studious and cynical person he never expected or desired more preferment. He 66 66 was a great admirer of R. Hooker " and J. Reynolds, whose memories being most dear to him, he did "for the sake of the first indus"triously collect and publish some "of his small treatises, and of the "latter, several of his epistles and "orations."] 11 ["....si totus non essem in poliendo libro octavo D. Richardi "Hookeri de Ecclesiastica Poli"teia, quem Præses Collegii nostri "mihi commendavit, aliquid ad te "misissem, ut tuum expíscarer ju"dicium an lucem necne merea : tur." 1612. H. Jackson, in a letter preserved by Fulman, X. 86. "..Jam occupatus sum in conficiendo D. "Hookeri libro 8vo. de Ecclesiastica "Politeia, qui est de regis dominio." Id. Septr. 1612. "Puto Præsidem "nostrum emissurum sub suo no"mine D. Hookeri librum octavum, 66 a me plane vitæ restitutum. "Tulit "alter honores."" Id. 1612, D. Thomæ Festo.] 66 12 [Fuller, Worthies of England, p. 276, tit. Exeter. "John Barkham, born in this city, was bred "in Corpus Christi college in Ox"ford, whereof he was fellow, chap"lain afterwards to Archbishop "Bancroft, and parson of Bock"ing in Essex. Much his modesty "and no less his learning; who, "though never the public parent "of any, was the careful nurse " of many books, which had other"wise expired in their infancy had "not his care preserved them.... "A greater lover of coins than money....That excellent collec"tion in Oxford library was his gift to the archbishop, before the archbishop gave it to the uni 66 66 66 FURTHER APPENDIX, No. I. Lambeth 13; at which time, I have heard, they were put into the bishop's library, and that they remained there till the martyrdom of Archbishop Laud, and were then by the brethren of that faction given with all the library to Hugh Peters 14, as a reward for his remarkable service in those sad times of the Church's confusion: and though they could hardly fall into a fouler hand, yet there wanted not other endeavours to corrupt and make them speak that language, for which the faction then fought; which indeed was, "to subject "the sovereign power to the people." But I need not strive to vindicate Mr. Hooker in this particular; his known loyalty to his Prince whilst he lived, the sorrow expressed by King James at his death, the value our late Sovereign (of ever-blessed memory) put upon his works, and now the singular character of his worth by you given in the passages of his life, (especially in your Appendix to it,) do sufficiently clear him from that imputation: and I am glad you mention how much value Thomas Stapleton, Pope Clement the Eighth, and other eminent men of the Romish persuasion, have put upon his Books, having been told the same in my youth by persons of worth that have travelled Italy. Lastly, I must again congratulate this undertaking of yours, as now more proper to you than any other person, by reason of your long knowledge and alliance to the worthy family of the Cranmers, (my old friends also,) who have been men of noted wisdom, especially Mr. George Cranmer, whose prudence, added to that of Sir Edwin Sandys, proved very useful in the completing of Mr. Hooker's matchless Books; one of their letters I herewith send you, to make use of, if you think |