I intend therefore to speak next of Dr. Cooper,<296> because of bishop Horne and bishop Watson,<297> I cannot add anything upon sure ground; for of the former times, I have other books of stories, or relation of my father that lived in those days; but of these that lived in the first twenty years of the Queen's reign, when I was at school or at the university, I could hear little; yet at my first coming to the court, I heard this pretty tale, that a bishop of Winchester one day in pleasant talk, comparing his revenue with the archbishops of Canterbury, should say,—"Your Graces will show better in the rack, but mine will be found more in the manger;"—upon which a courtier of good place said, "it might be so in diebus illis;<298> but, (saith he,) the rack stands so high in sight, that it is fit to keep it full, but it may be, since that time, some have, with a provideatur, swept some provender out of the manger:" and because this metaphor comes from the stable, I suspect it was meant by the Master of the Horse.

            To come then to bishop Cooper, of him I can say much, and I should do him great wrong, if I should say nothing; for he was indeed a reverent man, very well learned; exceeding industrious, and (which was in those days accounted a great praise to him, and a chief came of his preferment,) he wrote that great Dictionary<299> that yet bears his name. His life in Oxford was very commendable, and in some sort saint-like; for if it be saint-like to live unreprovable, to bear a cross patiently, to forgive great injuries freely; this man's example is sampleless in this age.

            He married a wife in Oxford, for that special just cause (I had almost said, only cause) why clergymen should marry, viz. for avoiding of sin; melius est enim nubere quam uri:<300> yet was it his very hard hap that she proved too light for his gravity many grains. At the first he winked at it with a Socratical and philosophical patience; taking, or rather mistaking, the equivocating counsel of Erasmus his echo. Quid si mihi veniat usu, quod his qui incidunt in uxores parum pudicas parumque frugiferas? feras; At qui cum talibus morte durior est vita? vita:<301> wherein I observe in the two echoes, how in the first, feras signifies either the verb, suffer, or the noun, wild beasts, or shrews. In the latter, vita signifieth the noun life, or the verbs shun or eschew: so he (good man) construed feras vite, suffer during life, and I should take it vita feras, shun shrews. But this fera, whom his feras made feram, committed wickedness even with greediness, more than was in power of flesh and blood to bear. Wherewith being much afflicted, having warned his brother privately; and borne with him perhaps 70 times seven times; in the end, taking him both in a place and fashion (not fit to be named) that would have angered a saint, he drove him thence, not much unlike as Tobias drove away the spirit Asmodeus, for that was done with a roast,<302> and this with a spit. It was high time now to follow the counsel dic Ecclesiæ; so (as all Oxford knows) her paramour was bound from her in a bond of a hundred pound, but they should rather be bolts of an hundred pound.

            The whole university in reverence of the man and indignity of the matter, offered him to separate his wife from him by public authority, and so to set him free, being the innocent party. But he would by no means agree thereto, alleging, he knew his own infirmity, that he might not live unmarried; and to divorce and marry again, he would not charge his conscience with so great a scandal.

            After he was bishop, mad Martin, or Marprelate, wrote his book or rather libel against bishops,<304> which some (playing with Martin at his own weapon) answered pleasantly both in rhymes and prose, as perhaps your Highness hath seen, or I wish you should see, for they are short and sharp, But this bishop with authority and gravity confuted him soundly;<305> whereupon Martin Madcap (for I think his cap and head had like portion of wit) replying, anabaptised his bastard book by the name of Work for the Cooper; <306> and had not the wisdom of the state prevented him, I think he and his favourers would have made work for the tinker: and so much of Bishop Cooper, though I could add a report, that a great lord dying in his time bequeathed him a great legacy, but because I have not seen his last testament, I cannot precisely affirm it.

Prev Next