It is well known that the preface to the Ecclesiastical Polity was one of the two books to which James II. ascribed his return into the fold of Rome; and it is not difficult to perceive by what course of reasoning on the positions it contains this was effected.
[357] In the life of Hooker prefixed to the edition I use, fol. 1671, I find an assertion of Dr. Barnard, chaplain to Usher, that he had seen a manuscript of the last books of Hooker, containing many things omitted in the printed volume. One passage is quoted, and seems in Hooker's style. But the question is rather with respect to interpolations than omissions. And of the former I see no evidence or likelihood. If it be true, as is alleged, that different manuscripts of the three last books did not agree, if even these disagreements were the result of fraud, why should we conclude that they were corrupted by the puritans rather than the church? In Zouch's edition of Walton's Life of Hooker, the reader will find a long and ill digested note on this subject, the result of which has been to convince me that there is no reason to believe any other than verbal changes to have been made in the loose draught which the author left, but that whatever changes were made, it does not appear that the manuscript was ever in the hands of the puritans. The strongest probability, however, of their authenticity is from internal evidence.
A late writer has produced a somewhat ridiculous proof of the carelessness with which all editions of the Ecclesiastical Polity have been printed; a sentence having slipped into the text of the seventh book, which makes nonsense, and which he very probably conjectures to have been a marginal memorandum of the author for his own use on revising the manuscript. M'Crie's Life of Melvil, vol. i. p. 471.
[358] The puritans objected to the title of lord bishops. Sampson wrote a peevish letter to Grindal on this, and received a very good answer. Strype's Parker, Append. 178. Parker, in a letter to Cecil, defends it on the best ground; that the bishops hold their lands by barony, and therefore the giving them the title of lords was no irregularity, and nothing more than a consequence of the tenure. Collier, 544. This will not cover our modern colonial bishops, on whom the same title has, without any good reason, been conferred.
[359] Strype's Annals, i. 159.
[360] 1 Eliz. c. 19; 13 Eliz. c. 10; Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. ii. c. 28. The exception in favour of the Crown was repealed in the first year of James.
[361] It was couched in the following terms:—
"Proud Prelate,—You know what you were before I made you what you are: if you do not immediately comply with my request, by G—— I will unfrock you.
Elizabeth."
Poor Cox wrote a very good letter before this, printed in Strype's Annals, vol. ii. Append. 84. The names of Hatton Garden and Ely Place (Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ) still bear witness to the encroaching lord keeper, and the elbowed bishop.