interest and some importance. It must be borne in mind in reading it that Lord Burghley was throughout far more favourable to Travers than Whitgift was, and that the latter was in these annotations making out his case to the best of his ability, in excuse for his somewhat sharp treatment of the former. On the whole, he makes out a good case. It was obvious that no discipline could be maintained at all if a man holding, as Travers did, the constituted authorities of his own Church in utter contempt, repudiating their discipline, and despising their orders, could go abroad on purpose to free himself from their authority, receive his commission there from the hands of a mere set of malcontents like himself, and then come back and claim that he held any office or cure in the Church of England which might fall to his lot, by as good a title as the best there. In the main, Whitgift's position was so strong that he had no difficulty in maintaining it, and Travers remained silenced, but he was shortly after called to Dublin by Archbishop Loftus and made Master of Trinity College.
There are, however, some incidental points touched by these disputants which are of value as showing the state of things in the English Church at the period. In the course of an argument that ordination in one Church was always held good in others, Travers says, 'Afore Mr. Whittingham's case there was never any question moved in this Church to the contrary,' and to this historical statement Whitgift takes no objection.[1] Travers proceeds: 'The question being moved about him, yet was neither the word of God nor the law of
- ↑ Any person who reads these papers, as given by Strype, will see that Whitgift is taking every point he can against Travers, and would have been most unlikely to let such a statement pass, had he been able to question it.
