table.  And at this place he built also a fair Free-school, with a good accommodation and maintenance for the Master and Scholars.  Which gave just occasion for Boyse Sisi, then Ambassador for the French King, and resident here, at the Bishop’s death, to say, “the Bishop had published many learned books; but a Free-school to train up youth, and an Hospital to lodge and maintain aged and poor people, were the best evidences of Christian learning that a Bishop could leave to posterity.”  This good Bishop lived to see King James settled in peace, and then fell into an extreme sickness at his Palace in Lambeth; of which when the King had notice, he went presently to visit him, and found him in his bed in a declining condition and very weak; and after some short discourse betwixt them, the King at his departure assured him, “He had a great affection for him, and a very high value for his prudence and virtues, and would endeavour to beg his life of God for the good of his Church.”  To which the good Bishop replied, “Pro Ecclesia Dei!  Pro Ecclesia Dei!” which were the last words he ever spake; therein testifying, that as in his life, so at his death, his chiefest care was of God’s Church.

This John Whitgift was made Archbishop in the year 1583.  In which busy place he continued twenty years and some months; and in which time you may believe he had many trials of his courage and patience:  but his motto was “Vincit qui patitur;” and he made it good.

[Sidenote:  His trials]

Many of his trials were occasioned by the then powerful Earl of Leicester, who did still—­but secretly—­raise and cherish a faction of Non-conformists to oppose him; especially one Thomas Cartwright,[19] a man of noted learning, sometime contemporary with the Bishop in Cambridge, and of the same College, of which the Bishop had been Master; in which place there began some emulations,—­the particulars I forbear,—­and at last open and high oppositions betwixt them; and in which you may believe Mr. Cartwright was most faulty, if his expulsion out of the University can incline you to it.

And in this discontent after the Earl’s death,—­which was 1588,—­Mr. Cartwright appeared a chief cherisher of a party that were for the Geneva Church-government; and, to effect it, he ran himself into many dangers both of liberty and life, appearing at the last to justify himself and his party in many remonstrances, which he caused to be printed:  and to which the Bishop made a first answer, and Cartwright replied upon him; and then the Bishop having rejoined to his first reply, Mr. Cartwright either was, or was persuaded to be, satisfied, for he wrote no more, but left the Reader to be judge which had maintained their cause with most charity and reason.  After some silence, Mr. Cartwright received from the Bishop many personal favours and betook himself to a more private living, which was at Warwick, where he was made Master of an Hospital, and lived quietly, and grew rich; and where the Bishop gave him a licence to preach, upon promises not to meddle with controversies, but incline his hearers to piety and moderation:  and this promise he kept during his life, which ended 1602, the Bishop surviving him but some few months; each ending his days in perfect charity with the other.