described as "a painful student," i. e. painstaking, and his studies from the first were largely in the Holy Scriptures. He took his degree (B.A.) in 1525, and in 1527 was ordained both deacon (April) and priest (June). He was not twenty-three until August 6. His pastoral work began in his native city, but the following year, after refusing an offer from Cardinal College, Oxford, he was elected to a Fellowship at his college. From this time he devoted himself wholly to theological studies, and graduated B.D. in 1535 and D.D. in 1538.

In 1544 he was appointed Master of his College by Henry VIII's mandate, which describes him "as well for his approved learning, wisdom and honesty as for his singular grace and industry, in bringing up youth in virtue and learning, so apt for the exercise of the said room (Mastership) that it is thought very hard to find the like for all respects and purposes." He exercised a watchful care over the College revenues, and reformed some abuses caused by the carelessness or peculation of past bursars. Because most of the benefactors of the College belonged to Norfolk, he secured the appointment of Norfolk men as Fellows. The library was in a state of neglect, and so great were his benefactions to it that he is justly regarded as its founder. He began now the study which he continued throughout his life, and never lost an opportunity of securing manuscripts, which have made the library of Corpus famous throughout the world. As ViceChancellor, Parker had trouble with the Chancellor (Bishop Gardiner), whose haughty spirit could never brook opposition. The dispute was about a play performed by the students of Christ's College, which ridiculed Romish services and the Papacy. Parker had an interview with Henry VIII in 1546 at Hampton Court upon the subject of University property. An account of this in Parker's handwriting remains, and the King, after hearing the petition, said, "He thought he had not in his realm so many persons so honestly maintained in living by so little land and rent." This royal opinion protected the University, and the College

properties were saved from the all-devouring jaws which had closed upon the lands and possessions of the religious houses. In June, 1547, i. e. a few months after Henry's death, he married. Such clerical marriages were by law not void but voidable, but in 1549 the marriage of the clergy was made legal.

In Edward's reign Parker became again Vice-Chancellor, and was busy in matters of University reform. By this time two other preferments were added to his Mastership, including the Deanery of Lincoln, but he refused both the Mastership of Trinity College, "I was once nearly named Master of Trinity," and a bishopric, both in the gift of the King, preferring his own college where he had lived happily for so many years. He was in these years a frequent preacher at Norwich and elsewhere. In 1553 this life of studious and congenial activity came to an end.1 Parker, who had so often refused to take part in public affairs in London, unlike the more prominent men who fled abroad at the beginning of Mary's reign, after being deprived of every preferment he held, was allowed to live in retirement at the house of one of his friends. He fled from Cambridge by night, fracturing his leg by a fall from his horse,2 and lived the next five years without

1 A letter of his about this time shows him to have been a keen observer of character. Speaking of three prominent men of his day he says, "The third is a dissembler in friendship, who used to entertain his ill-willers very courteously and his friends very imperiously; thinking thereby to have the rule of both; whereby he lost both. For while his ill-willers spread how he would shake up his acquaintance, they gathered thereby the nature of his friendship towards his old friends, and therefore joyed not much of his glorious entertainment, and his friends indeed joyed less in him, for such his discouragement that they felt at his hands expertus loquor." Very shrewd and true remarks, true now and always.

2 Dean Hook conjectures that this fall took place the night he fled from Cambridge. He was privy to Northumberland's plot to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, and when Northumberland heard Mary had been proclaimed in London, to escape suspicion he proclaimed her at Cambridge. Parker was one against whom the anger and fury of the Cambridge citizens, who abhorred the plot, was directed. He was always reticent about the events of that night.

the persecution which some have stated to have existed upon his family inheritance, busy with his studies and delighting in the leisure and tranquillity and the freedom from care.1

Parker's Private Studies.

Before we proceed to his official life, it may be well to speak of Parker's literary tastes and achievements. He had a great love of antiquity and Church history. As Dean of Lincoln he made extensive collections of the property belonging to the Dean and Chapter and bequeathed his work to his College at Cambridge. He studied Saxon and projected the compilation of a Saxon lexicon. The earliest editions of Gildas, Matthew Paris and many other early chroniclers of English history are due to him. As Archbishop his position gave him opportunities of securing literary treasures which had been dispersed at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and he used this to the full, both at home and abroad. wrote the history of his predecessors at Canterbury, from Augustine onwards, and superintended the writing of the story of his own episcopate.

He

He loved to study college statutes, and during the twelve happy years as Dean of the College of Stoke by Clare he revised the statutes, and with the help of his secretary wrote the history of the College. With the instincts of an historian he collected the original letters of his contempories and documents illustrating Church history, and bequeathed his many manuscript volumes to his well-loved College of Corpus Christi at Cambridge. He took part in conjunction with Whitgift,

1 Parker's place of retreat was in the house of a friend near Norwich, where he lived with his wife and two children. Writing of those days he says, "I lived so joyful before God in my conscience, and so neither ashamed nor defected that the most sweet leisure for study to which the good Providence of God recalled me, created me much greater and more solid pleasures than that former busy and dangerous kind of living ever pleased me." At the end of the time he had only a few pounds (some £30, worth much more in present value) left of his personal estate.