recognition Playfere's testimony to his varied merit. CHAP. VI. open itself, when large ones were shut'.' It is to Bancroft's Bancroft's credit, that the last days of the great scholar were at least of his desert. free from pecuniary embarrassment. But Lively was now sixty years of age; and debt, domestic affliction, and unremitting literary labour had sadly impaired his physical power to resist the sudden illness by which, in 1605, he was attacked and carried off. Yet how,' said Playfere, in a discourse of singular pathos, 'could any death be sodaine to him, whose whole life was nothing else but a meditation of death, and whom the Lord, whensoever he came, might find doing his dutie? Wherefore no reason we should lament his departure out of this world....Rather, you reverend and learned university men, lament for this, that you have lost so famous a professor and so worthie a writer. Lament, you translators, being now deprived of him, who no lesse by his merit and desert, than by the privilege of his place, was to order and oversee all your travailes1.... Lament, lament all of you, of the towne as well as of the universitie, because our school hath lost such a singular ornament of this age, because our churches have lost such a faithfulle and syncere servant of Christ".' Attempt to obtain an augmentation in the Within a few months after Lively's death, an endeavour was made to obtain an increase in the endowment of two endowment of the professorships. It came under the notice of Coke, in the discharge of his functions as attorney-general, that at Oxford application had been made for such assistance, of two of the professor ships. 1 Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, i 9. 2 He was appointed to be one of the chiefest translators' [i.e. of the new version]. 'And as soon as it was knowne how farre in this travaile hee did more then any of the rest, hee was verie well prouided for in respect of liuing. For which my Lord his Grace of Canterburie now liuing, is much to bee reuerenced and honoured.' Playfere, Nine Sermons, etc. p. 218. On 20 Sept. 1604, Lively was presented by king James to the rectory of Purleigh in Essex. Cooper, Athenae, II 407. 8 Compare Ri. Mountagu's lan guage in his Acts and Monuments, p. 137,-'a man ultra fidem ad miraculum eruditus.' 4 Wherein how excellently he was imployed, all they can witnes who were joyned with him in labour. For though they be the verie flower of the universitie for knowledge of the tongues, yet they will not be ashamed to confess that no one man of their companie, if not by other respects, yet at leastwise for long experience and exercise in this kinde, was to be compared with him.' Nine Sermons, etc. p. 221. 5 Ibid. p. 223. and that it had been granted. The great lawyer was never CHAP. VI. wanting in the will to aid his own university, in his ready practical fashion, when opportunity might offer, and at his suggestion a similar application was sent in from Cambridge, -'so that alma academia Cantabrigiensis might not want that which Oxford, with greater vigilancy but not for greater meritt, had obteyned'. The appeal met with a favorable response from James, and the rectory of Somersham in Huntingdonshire was granted for presentation to the Regius professor of divinity, and that of Terrington in Norfolk to be annexed to the lady Margaret professorship. The Lords, however, refused to confirm the royal grant, which consequently remained inoperative for more than a century. PLAYFERE, Margaret 1596-1609. It is possible that this disappointment may have con- THOMAS tributed to the melancholy which about this time began lady to overcloud the intellect of Playfere, who held the lady professor, Margaret professorship, and who, in the interval between the death of Perkins and the pulpit fame of John Cotton, was the foremost preacher in the university. It is interesting to note that he well repaid the kindness which young Williams had shewn to his brother professor, for it was mainly through the exertion of his good offices at St John's that the young Welshman was elected a fellow of that society. The lady Margaret professorship was at that His insanity time a biennial appointment, and when, in 1608, Playfere was 2 Feb. 160. again a candidate for the post, his mind became further affected by the prospect of a contest, and by the knowledge that the chancellor's influence was exerted to bring about the election of Davenant in his place. Immediately after the issue had been decided in his favour, his mind gave way, and he died in the following year. 1 Heywood and Wright, Cambridge University Transactions, II 206-7. 2 Cooper, Annals, i 18. 3 'Playfere is described by Hacket as 'then the pinacle of the college, far higher then the low-rooft building of the rest.' According to the same authority, Williams' election was opposed by a few with a wrong zeal 4 Fuller-Nuttall, 1 155. 5 This circumstance is not noted by Cooper (Athenae, 11 513-5) but and death, CHAP. VI. DOWNES, pro fessor of Greek, 1585 1625. and St John's. In Andrew Downes, whose lengthened tenure of the ANDREW Greek professorship lasted from 1585 to 1625, we recognise a prominent figure in university life at Cambridge throughout the reign of king James. Downes may be regarded as standing at the head of that long succession of able scholars whose reputation links together, to their mutual adornment, the Shrewsbury annals of Shrewsbury and St John's. A native of Shropshire, he received his earlier education at the famous grammar school of the county town, and passing on from thence to Cambridge, was elected a fellow of St John's in the year 1571, and from that time his energies were mainly bestowed on those studies whereby he acquired the reputation of being the foremost Grecian of his age. Like some others whose professorial fame has stood not less high, his character Account of was slightly tinctured with eccentricity. D'Ewes, who atby Simonds tended his lectures on Demosthenes, has left us a somewhat droll acount of a visit which he paid the great scholar at his own house, when he was ushered into the presence of a tall, elderly personage, with ruddy complexion and bright eyes, who received him with his legs on the table, and delivered himself of a long and learned monologue to his patient and awe-struck auditor. His pains,' says Fuller, referring to Downes' editorial labours, are so inlaid with Sir Henry Savile's edition of Chrysostom, that both will be preserved together. In a like, though less special manner, they are associated with a yet more memorable achievement, -the new translation of the Bible, known as the 'Authorised Version,' Downes given D'Ewes. The The successful completion of that great undertaking, AUTHORISED which had been delayed by Lively's death', was accompanied by circumstances (now almost forgotten), which clearly in VERSION OF THE see Baker-Mayor, p. 290; Fuller- 1 Fuller-Prickett and Wright, p. lations of the Bible, p. 322) states that while the notes of Bois, the pupil of Downes, on Chrysostom, were incorporated in the Benedictine edition of that author, those of Downes himself were omitted. Downes seems to have been jealous of his pupil's reputation: see Baker-Mayor, p. 598, 1. 18. 2 Fuller-Brewer, v 376. bridge trans dicate the atmosphere of jealousy and mistrust amid which CHAP. VI. the translators carried on their labours. Otherwise, it is evident that far greater pains were taken to avert the presence of such feelings than had been the case in the preparation of the Institution of a Christian Man1. Scrupulous care was shewn in selecting the forty-seven translators that they should be drawn in equal proportions from the two universities. Among the Cambridge divines whose names The Camhave already come before us, we find Andrewes of Pembroke lators. and his brother of Jesus College, Overall, Richardson, Chatterton of Emmanuel, Duport, Branthwaite, Samuel Ward, Downes, and Bois, all engaged. To this list are to be added Richard Clark and Dillingham, fellows of Christ's College, Spalding, a fellow of St John's, who succeeded Lively as professor of Hebrew,-Layfield, Harrison, Radcliffe, and Dakins, fellows of Trinity,-Robert Ward' and Geoffrey King, fellows of King's,-Byng of Peterhouse, and Richard Thomson of Clare Hall. Hugh Broughton, who had Hugh attacked the 'Bishops' Bible' with extreme acrimony, had, excluded. years before, proffered his assistance; but his overbearing temper and boldness as an emendator excluded him from participation in labours where it cannot be doubted that his Hebrew scholarship would have proved of high service1. Broughton In the original preface, which has long ceased to appear in later editions, we can discern the apprehensions and misgivings with which the translators sent forth the results of their long labours into the world. Whosoever,' they observe, 'attempteth anything for the publick, especially if Misgivings of it pertaineth to religion, and to the opening and clearing tors as to the of the Word of God, the same setteth himself upon a stage likely to be to be glouted upon by every evil eye,-yea, he casteth their labours. himself headlong upon pikes, to be gored by every sharp tongue.' That Bancroft imposed his will upon the trans 1 See supra, p. 18. 2 Allen, Lives, etc. vol. II; in Fuller-Brewer (v 373) erroneously described as of Queens' College. 3 Respecting Thomson and other of the translators, see Notes and Queries (3rd ser.), IV 228, 379-80. 4 Lewis, Hist. of the Translations, pp. 297-8; Westcott, Hist. of the English Bible, p. 160, n. 2. 5 Lewis, p. 325. the transla reception accorded to Current as sertions re bias given to the new version. CHAP. VI. lators so as to make the new version 'speak prelatical language','-and that certain passages were rendered with specting the servile deference to the royal views respecting not merely the doctrines of predestination and election but also witchcraft and the existence of evil spirits,—are assertions which it is impossible now either to disprove or verify. But in contrast alike to the misgivings of the translators and the imputations cast upon their labours, it may suffice here to cite the contemporary verdict of Selden, that 'the English translation is the best translation of the Bible in the world',' and to recall the reluctance with which, after the lapse of more than two centuries and a half, the religious public has contemplated the possibility of that venerable monument of the national faith and the English language being to any extent set aside by new canons of verbal criticism and a more profound exegesis. Selden's verdict. Demonstrations of satisfaction still sometimes to be Cambridge pulpits. Notwithstanding the repeated and increasingly rigorous Puritan dis- tests by which compliance with a prescribed standard of belief was enforced, utterances were still sometimes to be heard in the heard from the pulpits of the university which proved that speculation, dissatisfaction, and dissent were still fermenting beneath the rigid surface. At Christ's College, more especially, where Valentine Cary was endeavouring either to reduce the Puritan faction to subjection or to expel it altogether, we meet with three notable instances within a comparatively short period. Of these, the earliest appears to have been a sermon preached in 1608 by Thomas Taylor, a fellow of Christ's, at Great St Mary's. Taylor was the son of a Yorkshire gentleman well known as a zealous patron of the Puritan ministers in and about Richmond in his native county. That the son's attainments as a scholar were above mediocrity is shewn by the fact that he possessed sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to qualify him for a lectureship in that branch of learning in the college; while his abilities as a preacher must have attracted attention unusually early, if we THOMAS TAYLOR, b. 1576. d. 1632. 1 Anderson, Annals of the English Bible, 11 378; Westcott, u. s., p. 146, n. 2. 2 Lewis, u. 8., p. 330. |