and integrity, strict religious principles, devoted loyalty, and somewhat extravagent notions of the King's worshipful position as God's vice-gerent on earth, it must have been specially painful to think that he could be suspected of wronging the King whom he had so faithfully served, or of misappropriating money that had passed through his hands.
The bishop's views of the kingly state may be gathered from the device which he took for his seal on being raised to the episcopal dignity. It represented the King, whose chaplain he was, delivering to him a mitre, with the word "fidelil," and over it a cloud with a crown in it and the word "perseveranti;" alluding in the former to the earthly master's commission to his servant: "Quia super pauca fuisti fidelis super multa te constituam" (S. Matt. xxv. 21); and in the latter to the promise of the heavenly Master: "Esto fidelis usque ad mortem et dabo tibi coronam vitæ" (Rev. ii. 10).
In the above-mentioned letter to the Lord Deputy of Ireland the bishop expresses a belief as to who was the originator of the calumny, though he was not then sure of it: "One there is, James Martin, late vicar of Preston in Lanc', whom for many crimes and for deserting that great cure without preacher, nay reader, after many admonitions and long expectation, upon King James his speciall command, I was forced to deprive. This man, I suppose, is the first Informer, for he hath lately published in print a scandalous libell against mee onely for doing justice in pennancing adulterers;[1] wch pamphlet he hath dedicated to divers popish recusants, but especially to Sir Richard Hoghton. . . . . . If this man [Martin] may be apprehended, I doubt not but it will appeare who hath abused his Majesty by misenforming [him] with so foule an untruth. I desire not his punishment, but an acknowledgment of the wrong, that I may be sett right againe in his Majesty's good opinion."
- ↑ The bishop had issued some very severe penalties against adulterers and fornicators which were printed and circulated throughout his diocese; in pursuance of which adulterers were in several instances made to do public penance in their church in a white sheet.
