ing of the Maynooth Bill entered on the journals of the House of Lords was probably drawn up by the bishop, and expresses very clearly and concisely his logical objection to the measure.
As bishop of Llandaff he devoted himself strenuously to the work of church restoration which was then commencing in Wales, and more than twenty new churches and fifty-three glebe houses were built in his diocese during his tenure of the see. He also took care to require a knowledge of the Welsh language from the clergy whom he instituted, though he was always of opinion that the want of Welsh services had been greatly exaggerated. All the business of life, he said, was conducted in English, and the natural inference was that the vast majority of the Welsh people had no difficulty in understanding an English service. However, he quite recognised the necessity of having in every parish a clergyman who could speak Welsh. His charges delivered to the clergy of the diocese between 1831 and 1849 contain his views on this question, as well as on the great public controversies of the day. He was a high churchman, who at the same time was thoroughly opposed to the tractarians. He could see no logical distinction between the sacerdotal theory which they inculcated and the Roman doctrine of the priesthood. But all this time he had an equally strong aversion to dissent as substituting unauthorised for authorised teaching, and the order which the christian church had sanctioned by ancient and universal usage for the new-fangled systems of individuals. The bishop died on 14 Oct. 1849, and was buried in the ruined cathedral of Llandaff, having just completed his seventy-third year.
[W. J. Copleston's Memoirs of Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff; Remains of the late Edward Copleston, with an introduction by Archbishop Whately, 1854; Mozley's Reminiscences of Oriel College, 1883; Annual Register, 1849.]
COPLEY, ANTHONY (1567–1607?), poet and conspirator, third son of Sir Thomas Copley [q. v.], was born in 1567. He was left in England when his father went abroad, but in 1582, ‘being then a student at Furnivals Inn,’ he ‘stole away’ and joined his father and mother at Rouen. At Rouen he stayed for two years, and was then sent to Rome. There he remained for two years in the English college, having a pension of ten crowns from Pope Gregory. On leaving Rome he proceeded to the Low Countries, where he obtained a pension of twenty crowns from the Prince of Parma, and entered the service of the King of Spain, in which he remained until shortly before 1590. In that year he returned to England without permission, and was soon arrested and put in the Tower, whence we have a letter from him dated 6 Jan. 1590–1 to Wade, then lieutenant of the Tower, giving an account of his early life, and praying for pardon and employment. Other letters from him (printed by Strype) give information respecting the English exiles. Soon after we find him residing as a married man at Roughay, in the parish of Horsham, and on 22 June 1592, in a letter from Topcliffe to the queen, he is described as ‘the most desperate youth that liveth. … Copley did shoot a gentleman the last summer, and killed an ox with a musket, and in Horsham church threw his dagger at the parish clerk. … There liveth not the like, I think, in England, for sudden attempts, nor one upon whom I have good grounds to have watchful eyes’ (Strype, Annals, vol. iv.) He appears to have been an object of great suspicion to the government, and to have been imprisoned several times during the remainder of Elizabeth's reign. His writings, however, breathe fervent loyalty and devotion to the queen. In 1595 he published ‘Wits, Fittes, and Fancies fronted and entermedled with Presidentes of Honour and Wisdom; also Loves Owle, an idle conceited dialogue between Love and an olde Man,’ London, 1595 (Bodleian). The prose portion of this work is a collection of jests, stories, and sayings, chiefly taken from a Spanish work, ‘La Floresta Spagnola,’ and was reprinted in 1614 with additions, but without ‘Love's Owle’ (Brit. Mus.) This work was followed in 1596 by ‘A Fig for Fortune’ (Brit. Mus.), reprinted by the Spenser Society in 1883. It is a poem in six-line stanzas, and, like ‘Love's Owle,’ does not convey a very high idea of Copley's poetical powers. Extracts from it will be found in Corser's ‘Collectanea,’ ii. 456–9.
At the end of Elizabeth's reign Copley took an active part in the controversy between the Jesuits and the secular priests, and wrote two pamphlets on the side of the seculars, ‘An Answere to a Letter of a Jesuited Gentleman, by his Cosin, Maister A. C., concerning the Appeale, State, Jesuits,’ 1601, 4to (Brit. Mus.) This was followed by ‘Another Letter of Mr. A. C. to his Disjesuited Kinsman concerning the Appeale, State, Jesuits. Also a third Letter of his Apologeticall for himself against the calumnies contained against him in a certain Jesuiticall libell intituled A manifestation of folly and bad spirit,’ 1602, 4to (Bodleian); in this he announces ‘my forthcoming Manifestation of the Jesuit's Com-
