At Edmund numerous darts were flung,
Charles felt the sharper of the tongue:
Both lost their heads: he in the field,
This to the axe was forced to yield.

Charles with the higher throne is
graced,

Next him in heaven is Edmund placed;
The heart of Charles, while living here,
Flew hourly to the heavenly sphere:
"Tis now a monumental star,
Bright rays diffusing wide and far.

May I in bliss obtain a seat

At our blessed, martyred sovereign's
feet;

His foes will have the same desire,
If penitent, when they expire.
My God, indulge them when they die,
To be as near blessed Charles as I.

"Twill super-effluent joys create
To see his foes in happy state;
His tears in life on them he spent,
He'll sing a hymn at their ascent:
They'll God adore, who made their
crime

The occasion of their bliss sublime.'

In the same strain is the Royalist bishop's hymn to be sung 'On the 29th of May, being the day of the King's Restoration,' of which effort of the sacred muse the following verses are a favourable specimen,—

Of the average merit of Bishop Ken's poetical effusions the foregoing lines are much juster examples than his Morning Hymn' and 'Evening Hymn,' which are so greatly superior to the bulk of his wretched versifications that it is difficult to believe that he was their real author.

IN

CHAPTER III.

A FOLIO OF PORTRAITS.

N an earlier part of this work we had occasion to remark on the richness and brightness of clerical dress in medieval society, on the brilliance of the colours and the costliness of the silks and furs,* with which the wealthier ecclesiastics decorated themselves in the centuries when the affluent members of the community lavished upon personal adornments the greater part of their superfluous means.

It is certain that the civil troubles of the fifteenth century, by impoverishing the clerical, together with every other, class of society, tended to diminish very perceptibly the external splendour of spiritual persons, who may, moreover, have been induced to abate something of their long-used magnificence and sumptuousness out of deference to Lollard sentiment, which continued to influence society for the better after political Lollardy had been utterly extinguished. Nor, whilst endeavouring to realize the outward bearing and habiliments of the medieval ecclesiastics, must we fail to remember that, though a considerable proportion of them could afford to wear fur and silk, the majority of the beneficed clergy and the entire body of stipendiary curates, in every generation of the feudal period, endured a degree of indigence that compelled them to exercise the most

In Edward the Third's time it was ordered, That the clerks which have a degree in a church, cathedral, collegial, or in schools, and the king's clerks which have such an estate that requires fur, do and use according to the constitution of the same; and all other clerks which have above two hundred marks rent per annum, use and do as knights of the same rent; and other clerks under that rent, use as requires of an hundred-pound rent; and that all those, as well knights as clerks, which by this ordinance may use fur in winter, by the same manner may use it in the summer.'-Rot. 37 Ed. III.

stringent economy in their personal expenditure, and to be content with raiment of a cheap and modest kind.

But, whatever the effect of Lollardy and the civil wars in lowering the luxury and brightness of clerical costume in the fifteenth century, it cannot be doubted that, throughout the earlier part of his reign, Henry the Eighth's clergy were as bravely clad as the English clergy of any previous time since the coming of the ostentatious Normans. Partly from motives of policy, but chiefly to gratify one of the strongest passions of his lordly nature, Wolsey exhibited in his dress, retinue, and equipments, a determination to surpass the splendour of the secular nobles, whose envy he roused by his exorbitant power and insufferable arrogance; and the example of the most powerful and splendid ecclesiastic, who had swayed the fortunes of the country since the fall of Becket, had a notable effect on all the grades of the clergy in making them vie with each other in luxury and display. England had never witnessed a wealthier or more gorgeous body of sacerdotal persons than the array of dignitaries and monastic residents whom the Reformation stripped of their revenues and influence, reducing them from the estate of a peculiarly fortunate and dangerously dominant class to a condition of helplessness, indigence, and insecurity. Ejected from their peaceful colleges, and compelled to support life on small pensions, many of the deprived monks had neither the disposition nor the means to play the part of ecclesiastical fops. Nor were the monks the only ecclesiastics who were prejudicially affected by the suppression of the religious houses. It being part of Henry's policy to provide for deprived regulars by inducting them into small livings, in order that they might be more intimately blended by fortune and labour with the secular priests, and that the funds set apart for the maintenance of dispossessed monks might be rendered available for other uses, it was not long before the seculars found unprecedented difficulty in acquiring better preferments, or such small livings as incumbents had hitherto been accustomed to hold together with more lucrative benefices. Thus, whilst the monks were despoiled and depressed, the seculars were grievously affected by a sudden increase in the number of candidates for the offices for which they had heretofore been the chief applicants.

But no sooner had the clerical order rallied from the shock and impoverishment consequent on Henry's ecclesiastical changes, than its more fortunate members provoked the anger of severe censors by their indulgence in delicate and costly apparel. Velvet gowns were again frequently seen on the backs of prosperous priests, some of whom were even guilty of the effeminacy of wearing velvet shoes and slippers. Such men,' exclaimed honest Latimer, are more fit to dance the morris-dance, than to be permitted to preach.' The clergy of whom Master Latimer spake thus disdainfully were the clerical fops of Edward the Sixth's cathedral towns. The restoration of the Papacy by Edward's successor stimulated the vanity of these fancifully attired priests, of whom Strype records: "The priests, especially the better sort of them, took much care about the habit and apparel they wore. They went about in side-sweeping gowns, with great wide sleeves, four-cornered caps, and smooth smirk faces.' The four-cornered or geometrical cap-of which sufficient notice has been taken elsewhere- was universally resumed by those of the Marian clergy who, after laying it aside together with other badges of orthodoxy in Edward's time, determined like prudent men to accommodate themselves to the wishes of the Catholic queen.

Even more noticeable as marks or badges of party were the modes in which the clergy of the Reformation period dressed their hair, when authority left them at liberty to select their own ways of arranging it. After the tonsure had been forbidden or disused, as a sign of superstition and Papistry, whilst the High-church clergy cut their locks close, and shaved their cheeks as smooth as apples, the ministers of Genevan proclivities wore long hair and grew beards. Others of the clergy, occupying the middle ground between the extreme schools of ecclesiastical opinion, sometimes showed their liberality and disregard for trifles by removing or wearing beard, whiskers, and even moustaches, according as the humour took them to be more or less hairy. In my folio of clerical portraits I have the pictures of several eminent divines, whose moustaches lead me to infer that throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century, from the days of Elizabeth to the end of Charles the Second's time, clergymen wore moustaches much more generally than most