In conclusion, the Editor would avail himself of this means of expressing his acknowledgments for the kind assistance rendered to him by the Very Rev. the Dean of Bristol, Master of C. C. C. Cambridge; the Rev. B. Bandinel, D. D. Librarian of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Rev. W. H. Cox, B. D. Vice-Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, the Rev. A. Hackman, M. A. of Christ Church, Oxford, and Mr. Sibley, of the Pitt Press, Cambridge. His best thanks are also due to the Rev. J. J. Smith, A. M. fellow and tutor of Caius Coll. Cambridge, for the loan of a volume of original MS. letters, from the suggestions of which Strype arranged and prepared the greater portion of his works.

Ecclesiastical History Society's Office,
Strand, London.

Dec. 31, 1847.

ONE OF THEIR MAJESTIES' MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACE,

To pardon the presumption of the obscure person that dedicates this book to your grace, for the sake of the renowned man it treats of, viz., one of your illustrious predecessors, an archbishop of Canterbury, that hath deserved so eminently of that see, nay, and of the whole British Church; I may say, that deserved best of any archbishop before him that wore that

a ["John Tillotson, S.T.P., was nominated by the king in council (3 Will. and Mar.) April 23, 1691; a congé d'élire granted May 1, elected the 16th, confirmed in the church of S. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, London, the 28th, and

consecrated there the 31st of the same month. He died Nov. 22, 1694, and was buried in the church of S. Lawrence, Jewry, London. Reg. Cant." Le Neve's Fasti, p. 9. ed. Lond. 1716.]

In his

Three Conversions.

mitre. To whose solid learning, deliberation, and indefatigable pains, both the kings and people of this realm owe their deliverance from the long and cruel bondage of Rome. For it is true what the Romanists say in obloquy of this archbishop, and we Protestants say it to his eternal fame, that he was the first of all the archbishops of Canterbury that made a defection from the papal chair; thereby vindicating this crown from a base dependence upon a foreign jurisdiction. But whereas Parsons saith, that "this was the first change of religion in any archbishop of Canterbury from the beginning unto his daysb;" this is not so true; for sundry of archbishop Cranmer's predecessors, (to look no further than two or three hundred years backward), were of different judgments from the Church of Rome in some points. His immediate predecessor, Warham, approved of the king's title of supreme head of the church under Christ, in his own kingdom, against the doctrine of the pope's universal authority. And a century of years before

b [Parsons' Three Conversions of England, part 1. chap. xi. num. 27. p. 227. ed. 1603.]

e [See Examination of abp. Cranmer before Brooks. Foxe's Acts and Monuments, p. 1875. ed. Lond. 1583. Archbishop Parker gives the following account of the first

admission of the king's supremacy by the clergy:-" Clerus Anglicanus, qui Cardinali [Wolseio] ut Romani pontificis legato obtemperabant, ob admissam receptamque papæ potestatem actione de præmunire teneri putabatur. Cujus vi proscribi, et cum bonis atque mem

him, archbishop Chichely, though he were made the pope's legate, refused to exercise his power legantined, further than he should be authorized