prevented open rebellion, but secret organisations worked incessantly at Cambridge and throughout the country to effect the revolution. Parker dealt with the movement firmly but often reluctantly. The Queen rebuked him for want of success, and laid much of the odium of action upon him. At his death Grindal of London was sent to Canterbury in the hope that his puritanical sympathies would conciliate opposition. The eight years of his primacy were ineffective, and only contributed graver difficulties after he was gone. Stern and honest in character, he failed in administration. The Queen ordered him to suppress the secret "prophesyings," and he replied by a long letter of protest defending their value and asking the Crown to refer all religious matters to the bishops and divines. Elizabeth was least of all weak in government, and she could not brook weakness in the Primate. Grindal was therefore sequestrated for six months and suspended from his ecclesiastical functions. The Queen suggested his resignation, and this would have been sent in if death had not relieved the embarrassing position. Almost blind and sick at heart he lay down to die, and the sceptre of power passed from hands too feeble and paralysed to deal with the great problems of Church government. On days of storm and tempest the captain of the ship must not leave the bridge to consult with his officers what course to steer.

Whitgift succeeded to the vacant throne of Canterbury. His loyalty to the Church had been proved on many occasions by his actions and writings, and the task before him demanded courage and decision. Robert Browne set up the first secession on the principle of substituting for the old Church a new organisation consisting of saints, "the worthiest were they never so few." The massacre on S. Bartholomew's Day, 1572, had its reflex influence in England and the spirit of the nation rose in bitterest opposition to the " recusants." Puritan plots within the Church made defence a necessity, and Whitgift became a stern disciplinarian against his natural bent. A life and death struggle was forced

The

upon the Church, and the Primate bore the brunt of the battle with unflinching firmness. For many years his right-hand man was Richard Bancroft, who brought to his task gifts matured by long experience and information such as he alone could obtain or know how to use. Our story therefore now proceeds along the life of Bancroft. An American writer, Dr. Usher, has produced the most complete extant account of what he calls the "Reconstruction of the English Church," and this lecture will be largely indebted to his most thorough investigation of this period of English Church history.

Bancroft's Early Life.

Bancroft was born in September, 1544, at Farnworth in the parish of Prescot in Lancashire. His family was of no note, but the boy possessed the elements of success in an intellect keen and industrious and a resolve to make his way in life. The battle between the new and old faiths was fought in Lancashire with an intensity which reached every home, and Bancroft's boyhood was spent amid Radical politics and Protestant faith. All this gave him a knowledge of Puritanism, which he turned to good account in later years. His enemies called him a traitor, but this term belongs to the man who from motives of self-interest betrays a cause to which he is pledged, and not to the natural development of mind and convictions which comes from new surroundings and increased knowledge. The charge is constantly brought in political and Church life and is generally of no force. În the nineteenth century Gladstone began his political life "as the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories," and Chamberlain was the dreaded Radical who was expected to ruin the constitution and the Empire. Bancroft had no education but that of the local grammar school until he entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1564. Most of the men in college were studying for the ministry, and the University strife, if more refined and intellectual, was about the very things, chiefly the externals of worship, which were

disputed in the rough Lancashire village. Some of the chief national disputants were in Cambridge at this time, Whitgift as Master of Trinity, Cartwright as Fellow of S. John's, and Travers, Hooker's opponent, as Fellow of Trinity. Bancroft is not alone as a young man whose University career has changed the current of his thoughts, and probably his admiration for Whitgift, which soon changed into a friendship destined to be life-long, largely influenced his mind. By the time he took his degree in 1567 the Calvinism of his boyhood had lost its charm. At the age of twenty-three his uncle, Archbishop Curwen of Dublin, made him a Prebendary in S. Patrick's, Dublin, and a royal licence secured for him six months' leave of absence each year. At Cambridge he migrated to Jesus College and became engaged in tuition, at the same time laying the foundations of his knowledge of theology by a careful study of the great Fathers of the Church.

He was ordained a priest at Ely in 1574, and soon afterwards became Chaplain to Bishop Cox of Ely, Prebendary of the Cathedral, Rector of Teversham near Cambridge and one of the twelve University preachers. He was frequently in London in attendance upon Bishop Cox, who initiated him into the details of episcopal administration, requiring him to examine candidates for Orders, to assist in the Consistory Court and at Visitations, to interview "recusants and to transact a hundred other duties. The path to Church preferment then often lay through a bishop's household, where a larger acquaintance with public affairs was possible than in a parish or at the university. From the beginning of his ministry he showed those powers of industry, ability and study which later made him so valuable a servant of the Church and State.

In 1579 the Bishop of Ely died, and his young chaplain at the age of thirty-three passed into the household of Christopher Hatton, afterwards Lord Chancellor, by what influence I know not, but probably because of his powers and usefulness. This step sealed his Church views, as Hatton was hostile to the Puritans,