a near relation unto the archbishops of the church, so as their histories are but maimed and imperfect, without some respect had to those affairs, I have diligently interwoven many ecclesiastical emergencies into this history; and a great many more I have been forced to omit, though well worthy the public, lest the volume might swell too much.

n

If any might perhaps deem this a needless work, the life of this archbishop having been writ already in the Book of Martyrs," and the British Antiquities; I answer such, that I have therefore been short, and it may be silent in some things more fully and largely treated of elsewhere: but here are numberless notices given concerning the archbishop, some [of] which are nowhere else, [and] others very imperfectly, observed; besides the Narrations of the State and History of the Church, (which are every where interposed), in most of which the archbishop bore a part.

The cathedral church of Canterbury, now called Christ Church, I have in some places styled Trinity Church, because I so find it named in those particular records I made use of in those places; and it seems in some of the first years of our archbishop it ordinarily went by that old name.

My style may seem rough and unpolished, and the phrases here and there uncouth; the reason

m [See Foxe's Acts and Monuments, pp. 1859 et sqq. ed. 1583, in which will be found many particulars relative to the life of archbishop Cranmer.]

n [Parker, Antiq. Eccl. Brit. pp. 381-405. ed. 1572.]

of which is, because I confess I have often taken the very expressions and words of the papers I have used; and so may fall sometimes into obsolete terms, and a style not so acceptable to the present age, whose language is refined from what it was an hundred and fifty or forty years ago. But I have chosen to do this, that I might keep the nearer truth, and lest that by varying of the language, I might perhaps sometimes vary from the true meaning of my writer. And in truth, he that is a lover of antiquity loves the very language and phrases of antiquity.

The reader will find some few things here, which are already published in the late Specimen put forth by Anthony Harmer; he and I, it seems, lighting unwittingly upon the same records, to wit, king Edward's Council Book, and the Register of Christ Church, Canterbury. Nor could I strike out of my book what I found published in the said Specimen, having fully finished it, and the copy being under the press some weeks before that book came forth, and the matters there related interwoven into the contexture of my history.

And now after all this pains that I have taken in fulfilling this task, (which I assure the readers have not been small, nor of a few years), let me not for every little slip fall under their censure and reproach, but rather let them use me with gentleness and charity; considering how few, though much abler, will trouble themselves to

labour and drudge, and take journeys, and be at expenses in making such collections for the public good. It calls to mind what happened upon the death of the laborious antiquary, John Stow, who had been a collector of matters for the English history seven and forty years, and died 1605; and had all the collections of Reiner Wolf, (another historian, and a printer in king Edward the Sixth's days), and if he had lived but one year longer, intended to have published his long labours: but after his death there was not a man to be found to take the small pains to review his papers, and fit them for the press many indeed were talked of to do it, both persons of quality among the laity and clergy, (for the world had great and earnest expectation to see Stow in print), but when they were spoke to, to take the good work in hand, some of them said, That they thought the giving out of their names was rather done by secret enemies, on purpose to draw them into capital displeasure, and to bring their names and lives into a general question. Others said, that they who did such a work must flatter, which they could not, neither wilfully would they leave a scandal unto their posterity. Another said, he could not see how, in any civil action, a man should spend his travel, time, and money worse than in that which acquires no regard or reward, except backbiting and detraction. And one among the rest swore an oath, and said, he thanked God

that he was not yet mad, to waste his time, spend two hundred pounds a year, (which it seems Stow had done), trouble himself and all his friends, only to gain assurance of endless reproach, loss of liberty, and bring all his days in question. Yet at last, one Edward Howes undertook it, and effected it: but it happened just so to him, having been intolerably abused and scandalized for his labour. So slothful and backward are most to take pains in works of this nature, and so apt to censure those that do. I hope I shall meet, (if not with thanks, at least), with more candid men, and better usage.

But whatever happens, I shall arm myself with patience to undergo it, since I intend nothing hereby, but to be serviceable unto my country and God's church, and to justify the excellent reformation of it in these kingdoms; and finally, to do right unto the memory of that truly great and good archbishop of Canterbury. And thus recommending the success of this work unto God's blessing, I here make an end.

Sept. 29, 1693.

Low Leyton.

J. STRYPE.

I desire the reader to take notice, that when I quote Foxe's Acts and Monuments, it is the edition in the year 1610: and when the Life of king Henry VIII., by the lord Herbert, it is the edition of 1672: and when the History of the Reformation, by bishop Burnet, it is that of the year 1681. Farewell.

• [The first edition was published Lond. 1615.]