[Footnote A:  The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them, “potent courtiers,” and too worldly-minded men.  Bancroft was a man of vehement zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an epigrammatic epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson—­

  “Here lies his grace, in cold earth clad,
   Who died with want of what he had.”

We find a characteristic trait of this Bishop of London in this conference.  When Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, observed that “livings rather want learned men, than learned men livings, many in the universities pining for want of places.  I wish therefore some may have single coats (one living) before others have doublets (pluralities), and this method I have observed in bestowing the king’s benefices.”  Bancroft replied, “I commend your memorable care that way; but a doublet is necessary in cold weather.”  Thus an avaricious bishop could turn off, with a miserable jest, the open avowal of his love of pluralities.  Another, Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, when any one preached who was remarkable for his piety, desirous of withdrawing the king’s attention from truths he did not wish to have his majesty reminded of, would in the sermon-time entertain the king with a merry tale, which the king would laugh at, and tell those near him, that he could not hear the preacher for the old—­bishop; prefixing an epithet explicit of the character of these merry tales.  Kennet has preserved for us the “rank relation,” as he calls it; not, he adds, but “we have had divers hammerings and conflicts within us to leave it out.”—­Kennet’s “History of England,” ii. 729.]

These studies of polemical divinity, like those of the ancient scholastics, were not to be obtained without a robust intellectual exercise.  James instructed his son Charles,[A] who excelled in them; and to those studies Whitelocke attributes that aptitude of Charles I. which made him so skilful a summer-up of arguments, and endowed him with so clear a perception in giving his decisions.

[Footnote A:  That the clergy were somewhat jealous of their sovereign’s interference in these matters may be traced.  When James charged the chaplains, who were to wait on the prince in Spain, to decline, as far as possible, religious disputes, he added, that “should any happen, my son is able to moderate in them.”  The king, observing one of the divines smile, grew warm, vehemently affirming, “I tell ye, Charles shall manage a point in controversy with the best studied divine of ye all.”  What the king said was afterwards confirmed on an extraordinary occasion, in the conference Charles I. held with Alexander Henderson, the old champion of the kirk.  Deprived of books, which might furnish the sword and pistol of controversy, and without a chaplain to stand by him as a second, Charles I. fought the theological duel; and the old man, cast down, retired with such a sense of the learning and honour of the king, in maintaining the order of episcopacy in England,