Cosens, or any other of the prebends of that church, till wee shall appoint some other to be joyned with you."

Nothing remained for " my Lord of Durham " but to capitulate, and he does so in a letter to Laud charged with a sense of injured innocence.

"It is true, my good Lord, that I conceave that I have suffred more than ever was offred to any Bishop of Durham. . . It is strange that

I should suffer and they complain. I cannot conceive how these erroneous informations should come to his Majestie's eares, but by my predecessor, whose 3 chaplaines they concern, and it may be that scandalous letter was procured to that purpose, and 3 names subscribed who denie that they ever saw or subscribed the letter, but were abused by the postscript only: being informed that I denied to your Lordship

the truth thereof..

"I received a letter from the Lord President of the North, of 3 sides of paper, full of like misinformations. But if your Lordship's hand be in that letter, I can make better construction of yt, viz. that my proceeding should not give advantage to Mr. Smart.

"When I rehearsed to them, first what they had done out of a factous humour, first against an ancient praebendary, for indiscretly reproving them in indiscret and unauthorised innovations. 2ly, against the Deane, (a man well respected there) espetially for obteyning, long before ther time, the Deanery by Simonie, as they pretended . . . and thirdly, had articled rideculously, and dispersed libellous writings against their Bishop, even in the time of his Visitation. . . . I added the manifold trobles

they brought upon the church and themselves, and others only lookers on. . . .

"I am told that it was reported that Dr. Cosin stood suspended by me, and some other such stuff which puts me in mind to desire your Lordship to inform his Majestie that things much mistaken had occasioned his gracious letters; and sette me upright againe in his favour, at least in this misprision which occasioned that letter." 1

All these dissensions in the Durham Chapter may seem of comparatively slight importance, but they bulked large in Cosin's life. They were the grounds of the attacks which drove him beggared from his native land, and the recollection of them rankled long in his breast. Years afterwards his resentment was deeply roused when a correspondent drew his attention to Fuller's remarks, in his Church History, on the Smart affair:

"I am to thank both you and other of my friends, that intend to vindicate me from the injury done, no less to truth than to myself, by a passage in Mr. Fuller's History; which Í believe he inserted there (as he doth many things besides) upon the false reports and informations of other men, that were loath to let an old malicious accusation die, as it might well enough have done, if he had not kept it up still alive, and recorded it to posterity: whereof he is so sensible already himself, that by his own letter directed to me (more than a year since) he offered to make me amends in the next book he writes; but he hath not done it yet." "

1 State Papers, Domestic, Charles I., cciii. 90 ; Corr. i. 207 ff. 2 George Davenport, who was later Cosin's chaplain, told

Here Cosin did Fuller less than justice; for in the Worthies of England Fuller made the amende honorable by saying of Cosin:

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I must not pass over his constancy in his religion.. ... It must be confessed that a sort of fond people surmised as if he had once been declining to the Popish persuasion. Thus the dim-sighted complain of the darkness of the room, when, alas! the fault is in their own eyes; and the lame of the unevenness of the floor, when indeed it lieth in their unsound legs. Such were the silly folk (their understandings, the eyes of their mind, being darkened and their affections, the feet of their soul, made lame by prejudice), who have thus falsely conceited of this worthy doctor. However, if anything I have delivered in my Church History (relating therein a charge drawn up against him, for urging of some ceremonies, without inserting his purgation, which he effectually made, clearing himself from the least imputation of any fault) hath any way augmented this, I humbly crave pardon of him for the same. Sure I am, were his enemies now his judges (had they the least spark of ingenuity) they must acquit him, if proceeding according to the evidence of his writing, living, and disputing."

Sancroft in a letter that Cosin was very angry," and he also informed Fuller, at the same time convincing him of his mistake. It is interesting, too, to read in a letter written by Hyde (later Charles II.'s Chancellor and Earl of Clarendon), "I pray tell me whether my Lord of Ely [Wren] doth not think that my very good friend, Dr. Cosin, hath proceeded farther than he needed to have done upon any provocation Mr. Fuller could have given him."

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CHAPTER IV

WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL

No man of that age saw the truth, the whole truth; there was not light enough for that. The consequence, of course, was a violent exaggeration of each party for the time."-COLEridge.

HOWEVER alarmed the House of Commons may have been as to Cosin's loyalty, the King probably had no reason to doubt it when, in 1633, he passed through Durham on his progress into Scotland to be crowned. The regulation of the King's reception, and the arrangement of the services in the Cathedral, naturally devolved on the liturgical expert of the Chapter, and Cosin has left on record an account in Latin of the royal visit. Charles arrived from Auckland at 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 1st; and, having recited the Lord's Prayer, submissa voce, at the north door, he entered the Cathedral under a silken canopy, held by eight prebendaries in surplices. Seated on a chair near the font, he received an address of welcome from the Dean, and joined in prayers for the prosperity of his journey. Then, while the Te Deum was being sung, he proceeded to the quire, where a short service was held. After service he visited the

tombs of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede,1 and was presented by the Chapter with a rich cope (which he handed over to Laud for use in the royal chapel), and also with a petition for the Confirmation of the rights of the Cathedral Church. On the Sunday he attended the Cathedral Matins, when the Bishop of the diocese preached, but remained at the Bishop's castle for Evensong. And next day, to the delight no doubt, and at the instigation most probably, of our zealous Prebendary, a royal letter was received by the Chapter, drawing attention to certain points "which we cannot but think most unfitting for that place and altogether unseeming the magnificence of so godly a fabric." The Chapter was ordered to remove certain tenements in the churchyard, and to find seats elsewhere than in the quire for the Mayor and Corporation of Durham and for the wives of the Chapter and other "women of quality."

The royal visit seems, in fact, to have been a complete success, and Charles took an early opportunity to mark his approval of the member of the Chapter to whom that success was, doubtless, very largely due. Matthew Wren, on his appointment to the Bishopric of Hereford, vacated the Mastership of St. Peter's College, Cambridge; and, on February 8th, 1634-5, Cosin was appointed to succeed him as the head of the college which claims to be the most ancient foundation in Cambridge.

1 Here the royal attention was drawn to the new inscription, lately composed by Cosin, but no longer in silu (Corr. i. 296).