I.

CHAP. ever held with an admiration. He signified what a good husband he would be; and that a little would serve a litAnno 1542. tle ordinary man as he was. No annual pension it was that he desired, but only a little money for the present expedition to set him out. That he had made noble friends in England, and particularly his lady, the Lady Elizabeth, who, he made no doubt, would upon the motion contribute largely to his petition. And the Duchess of Suffolk would be another, who had already promised him largely and nobly: whose son, the Lord Charles, he had instructed for some months in Greek: and her liberality he had reserved for this time and use. The Duke of Suffolk, the other son of the Duchess, favoured him also; since by his means and teaching, he wrote so fair a hand as he did. From both the Marquisses also, viz. Dorset and Northampton, he had also great expectation. But the imparting of these his requests, he left to be managed by his friend Cheke, who, as we heard before, had blown up these desires in him; and in his ancient goodwill to him he confided.

The benefit of Cheke's lectures.

Cheke University Ora

tor.

Thus did the lectures of Cheke inflame his auditors to noble desires and virtuous enterprises; and tended not barely to instruct them in the understanding of a language, but to enlarge their faculties with good knowledge, and to furnish their minds with principles of wisdom, by his learned expositions and commentaries upon the authors he read to them. In short, we must dismiss our Greek Reader with the character Leland gave him:

Chacus Cecropii gloria prima gregis.

"Cheke the chief glory of th' Athenian tribe.”

SECT. VI.

Cheke University Orator.

CHEKE was an orator as well as a linguist; and the University made him some time their Orator. And in that office he adorned the Roman language, as well as in his

lectures he did the Grecian. Which place he held till he SECT. removed to Court; and then was succeeded by Mr. Ascham

of the same college.

VI.

Anno 1543.

two Homi

sostom.

It was about the year 1543, that Cheke, being still at Publishes Cambridge, gave the first specimen in print of his Greek lies of Chrylearning, as well as public testimony of his gratitude to the King. For having gotten an authentic Greek MS. of two of St. Chrysostom's Homilies, he translated them into elegant Latin, and printed them at London, with a dedication thereof to his sovereign prince and patron the King. Wherein he took occasion to acknowledge and extol the King's free and voluntary munificence towards him, in making him first his Scholar, and then his Greek Lecturer. Dating it from Cambridge, at Christmas 1543, subscribing himself, Tuæ Majestatis Scholasticus, et assiduus Precator; i. e. "Your Majesty's Scholar, and daily "Bedesman," as the phrase then was.

But Cheke was now to be transplanted into another soil, and his learning and virtues were preparing greater honours for him.

Anno 1544.

Becomes

CHAP. II.

From Cheke's coming to Court, to his advancement to the
Provostship of King's College in Cambridge,

SECT. I.

Cheke removed to the Court.

loss of him at Cambridge.
His usefulness.

Instructs the Prince. The

Canon of Christ's Church.

HIS first remove from the University was to the Court; schoolmas- King Henry VIII. calling him from thence July the 10th, ter to Prince 1544, as judging him a fit person to be schoolmaster to his

Edward.

only son Prince Edward, in the room, as it seems, of Dr. Richard Cox, now preferred in the Church, who yet was, much about him, and his Almoner, as he was when he was King. To him, joined with Sir Anthony Cook, a man of exquisite learning and true virtue, were the tender years of that royal youth committed, to instruct him in learning, manners, and religion. Both which men, by their joint and happy endeavours and counsels, framed a young King of the greatest, nay, of divine hopes. There are yet remaining some in print, and more in private libraries, written with his own hand, (particularly in the library at St. James's,) several of his pretty elegant Latin epistles to the King, his father; to Queen Katharine Par, his motherin-law; to the Duke of Somerset, his uncle; to Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, his godfather; and to his two sisters, when he was as yet very young, as likewise other of his exercises; which shew both his own forwardness in his learning, and the diligence of his instructors. Nor did he intermit his studies, when he came to wear a crown; but Cheke was always at his elbow, both in his closet and in his chapel, and wherever else he went, to inform and teach him. And that with so much sweetness and easiness, that he took a pleasure and delight in his book; and

66

I.

observed his set hours constantly at his study. So that in SECT. fine, one that knew Cheke and Cook well, writing to the latter, had these words: "a That divine youth drew that Anno 1544. "instruction from you both, Qua neque Cyrus nec Achil"les, neque Alexander, neque ullus unquam Regum politioremque sanctioremque accepit; i. e. Than which "never did Cyrus, nor Achilles, nor Alexander, nor any "other Kings, receive more polite and holy. With which, “could he have but grown up to man's estate, and arrived "to the government of the kingdom, what kingdom in "earth had been more happy? What nation ever extant 66 more blessed ?"

But if we look back to the University, what a want Cheke left there is not easily to be spoken; being a man that seemed to surpass the rest not only in learning, but in the free communication of it, and that accompanied with a marvellous affability and obligingness, and a most holy and virtuous behaviour; whereby he became a public pattern and example to the youth there. This loss of Cheke may be better understood by a part of a letter, one of his University friends wrote to him not long after he was gone to Court. My condition," said he, " is harder The want of ❝than the rest. They saw how you excelled in parts Cambridge. “and learning; I not only well knew this too, but was Int. Haddon. Epist. throughly acquainted with your more interior orna❝ments, which diffused themselves through all the parts "of your life. Which when I then duly weighed, how

66

66

great they were in you, I do so much the more want "them now, and so much the less am able to bear the "trifles, the levities, and the ignorances of many of our

66

66

men. But because this was owing either to your hap66 piness, that you should especially be there, where your diligence might flow abroad most extensively into the "commonwealth; or to our unhappiness, that we should "undergo the loss of your divine mouth, the loud trum"pet, as one may call it, of all good discipline, our trouble 66 ought to be abated, lest if we appear over-much dis

a Cælius Secund. Curio. Epist. Dedic. ante libr. de Pronunciat.

Cheke in

II.

Toxophil. p. 24. b.

66

CHAP. quieted, we may seem either not to love the common"wealth enough, or ourselves too much. It was a very Anno 1544. "good thought of your Plato, that some changes of com"monwealths are natural, that when there happens an "alteration in the state of our affairs, we should not be "much moved. And although your body be snatched "from us, yet your obliging behaviour, your wit, your study, your eloquence, and learning, is present in all our "schools, and in each of our private thoughts." And another of his learned acquaintance and collegians, Roger Ascham, thus writes of the want of him in the University. “As oft as I remember the departing of that man from "the University, (which thing I do not seldome,) so oft do "I wel perceive our most help and furtherance to learning "to have gon away with him. For by the great commo"dity that we took in hearing him read privatly in his "chamber, al Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides, Herodo"tus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Isocrates, and Plato, we feel "the great discommodity in not hearing of him Aristotle "and Demosthenes, which two authors, with al diligence "last of al, he thought to have redd unto us. And when "I consider how many men he succoured with his help " and his ayd, to abide here for learning; and how al men ́"were provoked and stirred up by his counsil and daily example, how they should come to learning, surely I "perceive that sentence of Plato to be true, which saith, "That there is nothing better in any commonwealth, "then that there should be always one or other excellent passing man; whose life and virtue should pluck forward "the wit, diligence, labour, and hope of al other; that "following his footsteps, they might come to the same "end, wherunto labour, learning, and virtue, had conveyed "him before.'

"The great hindrance of learning in lacking this man, "greatly I should lament, if this discommodity of ours "were not joined with the commodity and wealth of the "whole realm, for which purpose our most noble King, “ful of wisdom, called up this excellent man, ful of learn